Ribosomal proteins and elongation factors

Structural work on the translation machinery has recently undergone rapid progress. It is now known that six out of nine ribosomal proteins have an RNA-binding fold, and two domains of elongation factors Tu and G have very similar folds. In addition, the complex of EF-Tu with a GTP analogue and Phe-tRNA^Phe has a structure that overlaps exceedingly well with that of EF-G·GDP. These findings obviously have functional implications.