Ribo Robots Rock:
Translation

The production of mRNA is called transcription, because we begin and end with the language of nucleotides: DNA is transcribed into RNA. Sure, RNA uses uracil where DNA uses thymidine, but it’s still nucleic acid, still the same language. The process of reading mRNA to make protein, however, involves converting the language of nucleotides into a sequence of amino acids, and is thus known as translation.

Translation depends on self-assembling robots called ribosomes. Ribosomes are so-named because they’re made up mostly of spindled RNA mixed in with some protein. A ribosome is composed of two subunits, a large and a small. They sort of float around separately until they’re needed. When an mRNA transcript comes along, various proteins called initiation factors glom onto the transcript and onto the small ribosomal subunit. The small ribosomal subunit attaches to the transcript, finding an AUG—the start codon.