Topic: The Medical Applications of Protein Synthesis

[chenhongxia]

Protein synthesis is critical to the growth of cells; medicines that work by killing

cells often target this process. A majority of antibiotics work by disrupting the

translation process. Tetracycline is an antibiotic that inhibits the binding of tRNA

to the assembly site. Streptomycin works by causing the translation process to make

more mistakes than usual?as high as one mistake for every 100 amino acids. Proteins

with this many errors are not capable of performing their tasks, and the cells (in

this case, bacteria) die. Streptomycin also inhibits the initiation of the synthesis

process.