Control of translation is especially important in eukaryotic cells where it forms part of post-transcriptional regulatory networks of genes expression.
Yet details on when and what mRNA is translated and what mechanisms are responsible for this control are key to understanding of normal and pathological cell functionality.
TCP-seq thus can be considered more as a functional equivalent of ChIP-seq and similar methods of investigating momentary interactions of DNA that are redesigned to be applicable for translation.
However, it captures positions of only elongating ribosomes, and most dynamic and functionally important intermediates of translation at the initiation stage are not detected.
This particular aspect of the method can be expected to be developed further as the dynamics of ribosomal scanning on mRNA during translation initiation is generally unknown for the most of life.
Current dataset containing TCP-seq data for translation initiation is available for yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae,[5][6] and likely to be extended for other organisms in the future.