Translation

Definition

Translation in plain English

Translation is where the cell actually builds a protein by reading the RNA recipe made during transcription. A ribosome — the cell's construction machine — moves along the messenger RNA reading it three letters at a time; each three-letter chunk is a 'codon' that stands for one specific amino acid (the beads that string together to form a protein). Little delivery molecules called tRNA each carry one amino acid and have a matching three-letter tag (an anticodon) that snaps onto the correct codon, like a key fitting one lock, so the right building block gets added in the right order. It's called 'translation' because the cell is converting one language — the four-letter code of nucleic acids — into a totally different one, the language of proteins.

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Practice Translation

A ribosome reads messenger RNA to build a:

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