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Translation Initiation and Termination in the Human Malaria Parasite Plasmodium falciparum

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Synonyms

Protein synthesis; Start; Stop

Definition

The cell synthesizes several important bio polymers, among others: DNA using replication machinery, RNA using transcription machinery, and proteins using translation machinery. These synthesis processes have been divided into logical stages – initiation, elongation, and termination – with the building blocks being different for each polymer. Protein synthesis or translation, the focus of this article, is the process by which amino acid precursors are joined by peptide linkages to form proteins. The translation machinery consists of ribosomal proteins and ribosomal RNAs that act in conjunction with associated proteins at each step of translation: initiation factors that signal when and where to start translation, elongation factors that coordinate the addition of amino acids to the growing polypeptide chain, and termination factors that recognize stop codons.

While all these stages are highly regulated, the commitment to starting the...

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Correspondence to Swati Patankar .

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Patankar, S., Narayan, A., Chaudhari, R., Chakrabarti, R. (2013). Translation Initiation and Termination in the Human Malaria Parasite Plasmodium falciparum . In: Hommel, M., Kremsner, P. (eds) Encyclopedia of Malaria. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8757-9_55-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8757-9_55-1

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