University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Building Ribosomes from Computational LEGO

Earnest, Tyler

Content Files
Earnest_Tyler.pdf

Permalink

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/89888

Description

Title
Building Ribosomes from Computational LEGO
Author(s)
Earnest, Tyler
Issue Date
2016-04
Keyword(s)
Physics
Date of Ingest
2016-04-13T21:45:50Z
Abstract
Ribosomes, the molecular machines responsible for assembling protein from amino acids, are among the most fundamental structures in biology and are found across all domains of life. These machines are assembled hierarchically by the association of 54 proteins to three strands of RNA (in bacteria) in a highly coordinated sequence. My research involves the construction of a lattice based, computational model of Escherichia coli to study the in vivo assembly of the ribosomal small subunit. Explicit in this model is the transcription and translation of the ribosomal components. The central cell in this figure is a visualization of a single time point in the simulation. The cubes show how the simulation domain is discretized onto a lattice. The spheres represent the ribosomal protein (gray), small (yellow) and large (brown) subunits, completed ribosomes (white), and assembling ribosomes (orange). Inside the cell is a representation of the bacterial chromosome from which the ribosomal constituents are transcribed. This structure is from a separate project of mine which aims to provide accurate gene positioning for my whole cell simulations. These projects lay the groundwork for more complete models of living cells.
Type of Resource
  • text
  • image
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/89888
Copyright and License Information
Copyright 2016 Tyler Earnest

Owning Collections

Image of Research - Graduate Students PRIMARY