Signal hyposesis. Illustration

The signal hypothesis for secretory proteins formulated by Günter Blobel and David Sabatini. Blobel and Sabatini hypothesized in 1971 that a nascent peptide, bearing a terminal ‘signal’, interacts with a binding factor attached to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) membrane, allowing docking of the ribosome and its associated mRNA. Upon passage of the newly synthesized protein across the ER membrane, the ribosome is able to dissociate from the site of synthesis and re-enter the cytoplasmic pool, ready for another round of synthesis. From Blobel, G. and Sabatini, D. (1971) in Biomembranes, pp.193-1... Mehr ...