Ribosome
File sealed
The detectives are still writing this one up. The poster and the facts are below; the film and the interrogation room open soon.
Booking photographs
The suspect, from its real atomic coordinates. Drag to turn it. Height chart in nanometers, ruled every 1 nm. About 80 of them end to end would span an E. coli cell.
Rap sheet
- Answers to
- The 70S ribosome. Comes apart into 30S and 50S.
- Height
- 26 nm, standing on its small half.
- Weight
- About 4 attograms
- Build
- Two-thirds RNA, one-third protein: three RNAs, about 54 proteins.
- Habits
- Reads its orders three letters at a time. Strings about 20 amino acids a second.
- Known for
- Making every protein, with the key step done by RNA, not protein.
- Hours
- When food runs out, they pair up and hibernate.
- Last seen
- A 5 mL tube marked E. COLI in the freezer at HQ.
of them in one E. coli cell growing flat out.
Slow growers keep a tenth as many. You’ve never seen one.
The poster on the street
This is the photocopied wanted poster for Ribosome, No. 100. They were made for noticeboards around Boston, Cambridge and the rest of the east coast.
Found one? Scan its QR code with your phone. If you're a signed-in player, the sighting goes on your record with +1 XP.
Not a player yet? Join the Epic Quest: the real role-playing game of Molecular Reality, a nanopore lab, with the CEO as gamemaster.