Ribosome

Before jumping into these structures, be prepared. Both the large subunit and the small subunit are enormous complexes with many atoms: the structure of the large subunit in PDB entry 1ffk contains over 64,000 atoms, even though the authors chose to release only alpha carbon positions for the proteins, and the small subunit structure (1fka), also with partial structures for the proteins, contains almost 35,000 atoms. Many interactive display programs become very sluggish when working on structures this large.

The picture shown here shows the proposed active site in the large ribosomal subunit. Adenine 2486 is thought to perform the synthesis reaction, at the location indicated by the yellow arrow. The two guanines shown on the left and the potassium ion shown in green serve to activate this adenine through a series of hydrogen bonds, shown in light blue. This picture was created with RasMol. You can create a similar picture by turning off display of the whole structure and then selectively displaying A2486, A2485, G2102, and G2482.

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