Quality control by a mobile molecular workshop: quality versus quantity

Abstract

Ribosome is a molecular machine that moves on a messenger RNA (mRNA) track while, simultaneously, polymerizing a protein using the mRNA also as the corresponding template. We define, and analytically calculate, two different measures of the efficiency of this machine. However, we argue that its performance is evaluated better in terms of the translational fidelity and the speed with which it polymerizes a protein. We define both these quantities and calculate these analytically. Fidelity is a measure of the quality of the products, while the total quantity of products synthesized in a given interval depends on the speed of polymerization. We show that for synthesizing a large quantity of proteins, it is not necessary to sacrifice the quality. We also explore the effects of the quality control mechanism on the strength of mechanochemical coupling. We suggest experiments for testing some of the ideas presented here.