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Science 24 September 1999:
Vol. 285. no. 5436, pp. 2077 - 2078
DOI: 10.1126/science.285.5436.2077
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Perspectives

STRUCTURE:
Function Is Structure

Anders Liljas

Understanding the workings of the ribosome, the rotund organelle in the cell cytoplasm that translates mRNA into a chain of amino acids, has been one of the great challenges of cell biology. Now, this challenge has been largely met with the solving of the structure of the ribosome and its subunits by X-ray crystallography (Cate et al., Culver et al.). Anders Liljas discusses what new details these structures reveal about the interactions of the ribosomal subunits with mRNA and tRNA during protein synthesis.

The author is in the Department of Molecular Biophysics, Post Office Box 124, SE-221, Center for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, University of Lund, Lund S-22100, Sweden. E-mail: anders.liljas{at}mbfys.lu.se

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)