Initiation: Ribosome holds an mRNA and the “P” site reads the starting codon, which is AUG, the matching tRNA brings an amino acid. The ribosome moves to the right as it is always 5′ to 3′.

Elongation: the amino acid chain grows, and the a-site reads the next codon on the mRNA strand and brings the matching tRNA. The tRNA on the “p” site transfers over to the tRNA on the “A” site.

Termination: once the codon reads the STOP codon, as there is no tRNA for a STOP codon, the amino acid change will stop growing. Termination allows for the polypeptide chain to become a fully functioning protein.

the ribosomes will let go of the mRNA and the tRNA will let go of the polypeptide

This model did a good job of modelling translation by showing the RNA and how the ribosome is holding it, but our group did have a few issues not knowing when we were supposed to take photos and what steps we specifically needed pictures of for our blog post.