Practice question
Question
During elongation, ribosome moves in direction
Explanation
Genetic information decoding demands that ribosomes traverse messenger RNA from 5' end toward 3' end, reading codons sequentially while synthesizing polypeptide amino to carboxyl directionally. During each elongation cycle, EF-G or eEF2 catalyzes translocation that advances the ribosome by three nucleotides in the 5' to 3' direction along mRNA, repositioning peptidyl-tRNA from A to P site and deacylated tRNA from P to E site, thereby exposing the next codon in A site for decoding. Reverse 3' to 5' movement, random walk, or bidirectional sliding would disrupt reading frame maintenance and cause catastrophic frameshifts losing genetic coding integrity during translation.