Article Conformational Changes of Elongation Factor G on the Ribosome during tRNA Translocation Jinzhong Lin,1,4 Matthieu G. Gagnon,1,3,4 David Bulkley,1,2,5 and Thomas A. Steitz1,2,3,* 1Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8114, USA 2Department of Chemistry, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8107, USA 3Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06520-8114, USA 4Co-first author 5Present address: Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, San Francisco, CA 94158-2517, USA *Correspondence:
[email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2014.11.049 SUMMARY ends of tRNAs have moved from the A and P sites to the P and E sites on the 50S subunit, taking the hybrid A/P and P/E positions, The universally conserved GTPase elongation factor respectively. EF-G in complex with guanosine triphosphate (GTP) G (EF-G) catalyzes the translocation of tRNA and engages the PRE ribosome in both states, but binding to the non- mRNA on the ribosome after peptide bond formation. rotated PRE ribosome is immediately followed by the ratchet-like Despite numerous studies suggesting that EF-G movement of the ribosome into the rotated state (Chen et al., undergoes extensive conformational rearrange- 2011, 2013a; Ermolenko and Noller, 2011; Holtkamp et al., ments during translocation, high-resolution struc- 2014; Spiegel et al., 2007). In the next step, which is facilitated by the conformational changes of EF-G and concomitant GTP tures exist for essentially only one conformation of hydrolysis, the anticodon ends of tRNAs are translocated inside EF-G in complex with the ribosome.