What are ribosomes?
Q: What are ribosomes?
A: Ribosomes are tiny molecular robots that make proteins by doing RNA translation.
Q: Where are ribosomes found?
A: Ribosomes are found in all living cells, including prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
Q: How are ribosomes made?
A: Ribosomes start being made in the nucleolus of a cell, which is in the nucleus. They are a mixture of protein and RNA.
Q: Where do ribosomes move to after they are made?
A: Ribosomes move from the nucleolus into the cytoplasm, where they sit on the endoplasmic reticulum or throughout the cytoplasm.
Q: What is the job of ribosomes?
A: The job of ribosomes is to make new proteins by moving along a strand of messenger RNA and building a protein based on the code it reads. This is called translation.
Q: How many ribosomes are needed in each cell?
A: We need up to 10 million ribosomes in every cell.
Q: How do cells get the number of ribosomes needed?
A: Cells have many copies of rRNA genes to get the number of ribosomes needed. We inherit about 400 rRNA genes across five different chromosomes.
