A [Cu]rious Ribosomal Profiling Pattern Leads to the Discovery of Ribosomal Frameshifting in the Synthesis of a Copper Chaperone.

In many bacteria, separate genes encode a copper binding chaperone and a copper efflux pump, but in some the chaperone encoding gene has been elusive. In this issue of Molecular Cell, Meydan et al. (2017) report that ribosomes translating the ORF that encodes the copper pump frequently frameshift and terminate to produce the copper chaperone.