Peptide chain elongation rate and ribosomal activity in Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a function of the growth rate

Abstract

The peptide-chain elongation rate of Saccharomyces cerevisiae at two different growth rates was estimated by the kinetics of radioactive labelling of nascent and finished polypeptides as described by Gausing, 1972, and Young and Bremer, 1976. The elongation rates of a diploid strain cultured in yeast nitrogen base supplemented with glucose or acetate were 9.3 amino acids/s and 5.5 amino acids/s at 30 degrees C, respectively. These data together with published values on the "ribosomal efficency" as a function of growth rate (Waldron and Lacroute, (1975) enable us to estimate the rate of synthesis of ribosomal proteins as a function of the rate of total protein synthesis, alpha r, and the fraction of ribosomes that one active in protein synthesis. We conclude that in S. cerevisiae alpha r is largely independent of the growth rate while the fraction of active ribosomes decreases with decreasing growth rate.