Nature Communications (Feb 2022)
Adaptation to genome decay in the structure of the smallest eukaryotic ribosome
Abstract
Many parasitic organisms contain molecular structures that are drastically smaller than analogous structures in non-parasitic organisms. Here the authors describe a cryo-EM structure of the ribosome from E. cuniculi that reveals that it compensated rRNA truncations by evolving the ability to use small molecules as ribosomal building blocks.