Ribosomes and Ribosomal Proteins

Abstract As the catalyst for protein synthesis, the omnipresent ribosome is essential to all organisms and is composed, in mammalian cells, of four ribosomal ribonucleic acid species and 79 different ribosomal proteins. As many as several hundred copies of the genes encoding the RNA constituents form clusters within the human genome; by contrast, the genes encoding the proteins are widely dispersed, though they are functionally related and coordinately expressed.