Protein machines employ lever arms, ratchets, and gear-like mechanisms ferry cellular cargo along tracks inside the cell
Ribosome
The ribosome is a gigantic molecular machine made up of proteins and RNA that manufactures proteins in an assembly-line process.
Ubiquitin E3 ligase
Ubiquitin E3 ligase recognizes malformed or obsolete proteins and tags them for degradation
Lysosomes, proteasomes
Proteasomes are large protein machines that destroy other defective protein machines. Lysosomes are organelles that ingest larger debris particles inside the cell and break them down so that their components can be recycled
Endoplasmic reticulum
The endoplasmic reticulum is a network of membranes that contain an internal channel where proteins are processed and prepared in an assembly-line fashion for incorporation into the cell membrane and secretion into the extracellular environment or packed into membrane bound organelles like lysosomes
Peroxisomes
These organelles contain proteins that oxidize cellular debris, cleaning up the cell’s interior
Cell nucleus
This large organelle houses chromosomes which contain the information needed to make protein machines. It also contains the biochemical machinery that regulates the production of the protein machines and regions that make key components of ribosomes which, in turn, are the machines that make protein machines
Spliceosome and introns
These regions of the DNA molecule (introns) are variably excised by the spliceosome and spliced together to form a variety of protein machines from the same region of the DNA molecule
