transcript
0 nt left
Hover or arrow to a column to see what it would translate to.
0 drops
longest chain — / 12 to win
drop mode — every column is a ribosome
You choose the column, not the base — you cannot pick which aminoacyl-tRNA diffuses into the A site, only which ribosome is reading. Each column is read bottom-up, so a landing tile joins at the 3′ end, the growing C-terminus. Watch the readout under the board: it tells you exactly which codon you are about to complete.
Tiles fall to the bottom of the column you pick. Each column is read from the floor upward, so the floor is the 5′ end and each landing tile joins at the 3′ end — the C-terminus, which is the end a ribosome actually extends. Several columns reading in parallel is a polysome: what a real mRNA looks like under load.
You cannot choose which aminoacyl-tRNA diffuses into the A site. What you choose is which ribosome is reading. That means the randomness arrives before your decision rather than after it, and every three tiles in a column translate through the real genetic code.
When a column already holds two loose bases, dropping the third completes a codon — and the readout under the board names it. This is the whole game: a bot that reads the codon it is completing scores 2.6× one that drops at random. Pick the column whose completed residue matches the class of the chain already sitting there.
A merge collapses the stack, tiles settle, and that can complete the next codon. A real ribosome does not stop after one codon either — it runs processively down the transcript. Each further pass in a chain reaction is worth ×1.5, ×2, ×2.5 and so on.
A stop codon (UAA, UAG, UGA) landing on a chain releases it,
banks it for length² × class rarity, and empties much of the column. Or spend a release
factor — one earned every 12 codons — by clicking any chain of 2 or more. Either way the hole
collapses, and the collapse can cascade.
Every column topped out: ribosomes stalled and collided, which is what triggers ribosome-associated quality control in a real cell.