The process continues, and a polypeptide chain grows as the ribosome reads its way down the transcript, translating the code of nucleotides into the living language of proteins. When the ribosome reaches one of the three stop codons, it falls apart, and translation ceases--this is called termination. The protein folds up, ready (or almost ready) to begin work. The mRNA may be translated again a few times, but its half life in the cytoplasm is relatively short, and it won’t hang out long.

(The animation in Figure 21 takes a minute or two to download, but it's worth it.)

Figure 21. Translation of mRNA by the Ribosome. Animated sequence. Each colored block on the mRNA in this cartoon represents a codon, made up of three nucleotides. Each codon matches a three-nucleotide anticodon at one end of a tRNA molecule that carries the amino acid specified by that by that codon.