The different fundamental organisation of genetic material and organelles between eukaryotes and prokaryotes leads to dissimilar processes of protein synthesis. The larger eukaryotes have a more intricate pathway associated with protein synthesis, due to both the biochemical structure of organelles and enzymes, and also the transport of genetic material within cell. In this essay I hope to explore the differences of gene expression between these two types of cells.
A key difference between Eukaryotes and Prokaryotes is that Eukaryotes contain monocistronic mRNA molecules, meaning that the molecule will only code for cistron, and henceforth one protein. Conversely, Prokaryotic mRNA is polycistronic. This means that one mRNA molecule codes for multiple cistrons, resulting in the production of many proteins upon translation. Proteins produced from this polycistronic mRNA will likely have related function, for example each cistron may code for the subunits of the quaternary structure of a globular protein.
Eukaryotes contain non coding sequences within their DNA known as introns, while these are absent in Prokaryotes. In order for translation to form the correct sequence for the corresponding polypeptide, eukaryotic mRNA introns must be spliced using a collective …show more content…
Eukaryotic cells will bind with the ribosomes at the position of the recently added 5’G cap, and will then scan through the non-translated region mRNA molecule until it reaches the AUG start codon, where translation will occur. This is dissimilar to prokaryotic ribosomes, where the position of binding is at point known as the Shine-Dalgarno sequence, approximately 8 bases towards the 5’ direction of the mRNA strand of the start codon, delivering the ribosome to the exact position of the AUG start