Using the fact that E coli divides in roughly 30 min and tha

Using the fact that E. coli divides in roughly 30 min and that it contains roughly 2 times 104 ribosomes, estimate how many proteins are made per second by each ribosome.

Solution

Ecoli genome size 4.6 million base pairs, code for nearly 4200 protein coding genes and ~2500 operons. Average length of protein is 300 aminoacids. Each ribosome can add ~ 20 aminoacids /sec. 20,000 ribosomes can add approxemately < 4,00,000/sec. Single ribosome not able to synthesis complete protein per sec. but all the 20,000 ribosomes can synthesis on average 1300 proteins/sec.