Hashem Yaser, Frank Joachim
INSERM U1212, Institut Européen de Chimie et Biologie, Université de Bordeaux, Pessac 33607, France; email:
Department of Biological Sciences, Columbia University, New York, NY 10032, USA; email:
Annu Rev Biophys. 2018 May 20;47:125-151. doi: 10.1146/annurev-biophys-070816-034034. Epub 2018 Mar 1.
Translation initiation in eukaryotes is a highly regulated and rate-limiting process. It results in the assembly and disassembly of numerous transient and intermediate complexes involving over a dozen eukaryotic initiation factors (eIFs). This process culminates in the accommodation of a start codon marking the beginning of an open reading frame at the appropriate ribosomal site. Although this process has been extensively studied by hundreds of groups for nearly half a century, it has been only recently, especially during the last decade, that we have gained deeper insight into the mechanics of the eukaryotic translation initiation process. This advance in knowledge is due in part to the contributions of structural biology, which have shed light on the molecular mechanics underlying the different functions of various eukaryotic initiation factors. In this review, we focus exclusively on the contribution of structural biology to the understanding of the eukaryotic initiation process, a long-standing jigsaw puzzle that is just starting to yield the bigger picture.
真核生物中的翻译起始是一个受到高度调控且限速的过程。它导致了众多涉及十几种真核生物起始因子（eIFs）的瞬时和中间复合物的组装与拆卸。这个过程最终以在适当的核糖体位点容纳一个起始密码子为标志，该起始密码子标记着一个开放阅读框的开始。尽管数百个研究小组在近半个世纪里对这个过程进行了广泛研究，但直到最近，尤其是在过去十年中，我们才对真核生物翻译起始过程的机制有了更深入的了解。这一知识上的进步部分归功于结构生物学的贡献，结构生物学揭示了各种真核生物起始因子不同功能背后的分子机制。在这篇综述中，我们专门聚焦于结构生物学对理解真核生物起始过程的贡献，这是一个长期以来的拼图游戏，现在才刚刚开始展现出更宏观的图景。
