I’m guessing the codon+ribosome changes the affinity of the molecule to be more accepting of a specific trna/amino acid? Do we know how exactly that happens though? Is my understanding of how it works correct at all?
Like, I know that uua codes for leucine, but there must be chemical properties that make it so, right?
We can try explaining like I’m 15, not 5 lol.
In: Biology
It all about relative chemical bond strength and probability. The “right” amino acid has a higher bond strength than the “wrong” amino acid, so it is much easier for the “right” amino acid to kick out a “wrong” amino acid than the other way around. The longer that the ribosome waits on a given slot, the more likely that the “right” amino acid will eventually show up and kick out any squatters. Note that this means that the number of protein translation errors is inversely proportional to how much time the ribosome waits at each “slot”. How long the ribosome waits seems to be regulated by the specific genetic sequence the ribosome is reading as if the ribosome has been preprogrammed to know which genetic sequences are more important and which ones are less important.
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