Regulation of protein metabolism

Abstract

Translation is a sophisticated and complex mechanism requiring extensive biological machinery and subjected to an extremely fine regulation. Given that proteins account for a large fraction of biological macromolecules, a large proportion of the resource of cells is devoted to translation. Translation can be broken into three stages: initiation, elongation, termination. Regulation of translation can be exerted at many levels but in the first step, structural features in mRNAs in concert with the interactions among the initiation factors and other regulatory proteins, offer the possibility to regulate protein synthesis in rapid response to external stimuli, without invoking nuclear pathways for mRNA synthesis. The range of biological process that involve translational control of gene expression is expanding, in the brain, recent reports have provided evidences of the importance of translational control in process such us ischemia and reperfusion, neuronal plasticity and memory. © 2007 Springer-Verlag US.