Skoltech scientists Ilya Osterman, Zoe Chervontseva, Alena Sorokina, Maria Rubtsova, Ekaterina Komarova, Timofey Zatsepin, Mikhail Gelfand, Olga Dontsova and Petr Sergiev have published a paper “Translation at first sight: the influence of leading codons” in Nucleic Acids Research journal. The paper is a joint work of prof. Sergiev’s , prof. Gelfand’s and prof. Dontsova’s labs. The researchers have identified several features of the first codons affecting translation efficiency. Particularly, they have confirmed the inhibitory role of mRNA secondary structure. They have also shown that additional in-frame start have a positive impact on protein synthesis. Congratulations! Full text of the paper is available here.