Watching the Ribosome Making Peptide Bonds Between Unnatural Amino Acids

Here we describe a strategy, based on high-resolution ribosome crystallography, which allows one to catch the ribosome in the act of protein synthesis with unnatural amino acids. This approach paves the way to understanding how the ribosome discriminates (or fails to discriminate) natural from unnatural substrates, and how the active site of the ribosome can be remodeled to accommodate unnatural building blocks and produce artificial protein-like structures.