Structural aspects of ribonucleoprotein interactions in ribosomes

The increasing sophistication in instrumentation, the implementation of powerful genetic techniques and the use of ribosomes of halophilic and thermophilic bacteria have resulted in major accomplishments which could not be foreseen earlier. Most of the recent studies are reviewed in three volumes of Biochemie, two of which are dedicated to the late HG Wittmann and one to A Spirin' s retirement, as well as in the proceedings of the International Conference on 'The Translational Appara ms' held in Berlin in November 1992, which below is called 'Ribosome-92'. We have selected a subset of studies which, in our opinion, reflects the characteristic trends in the past year's structural research in protein-RNA interactions. Studies on ribosomes as a cellular assemblage will be addressed in the next issue of Current Opinion in Structural Biology. face of these subunits (E Arndt, C Paulke, F Franceschi, abstract 86, Ribosome-92); and the crystallization of particles lacking a few proteins [4"].