Running a Stop Sign

MDA Quest Magazine | April 2005

PTC124 sticks to ribosomes — the cells’ protein factories — and prompts them to interpret a premature stop codon as a normal codon. Instead of aborting assembly of the protein, the ribosome inserts a protein building block — an amino acid — and continues making a complete protein chain until it encounters the normal termination codon, which the ribosome correctly interprets as a stop. read story