Assembly of ribosomes
• Ribosomal RNA is transcribed as a 45S precursor RNA,
synthesized in the nucleolus by polI from thousands of
copies of the gene.
• The 45S precursor (13,000 nt)is processed into 3
smaller RNAs 28S (5000 nt), 18S (2000 nt) and 5.8S
(160 nt)
• The 5S subunit is synthesized by polIII from a cluster of
2000 genes located separately from the other ribosomal
genes
• Some 80 proteins associate with the rRNAs to make up
complete ribosome.
• Small ribosomal subunit (40S) contains 18S rRNA
while the large 60S subunit contains the remaining
rRNAs