ABSTRACT
The extremely thermophilic bacterium Thermus has been a major contributor to our understanding of the evolution of life at extreme temperatures and has provided fundamental insights into biology at the molecular level. The choice of Thermus as the focus of structural genomics efforts and the facile genetics of this organism have combined to make it the ideal model thermophile. One area of inquiry that clearly epitomizes the impact of this organism on biology is the investigation into the mechanism of protein synthesis. In this chapter, we describe some of the attributes of Thermus as a model organism, focusing on the genetics and structural biology of the ribosome and the mechanism by which it catalyzes the synthesis of proteins encoded by the genome.
