Ribosome Traffic Jam Simulator

A single strand of mRNA is rarely translated by just one ribosome — dozens can load onto the same transcript in sequence, forming a "polysome". Because each ribosome physically covers about ten codons and cannot pass the one ahead of it, translation behaves exactly like traffic flow on a one-lane road: this simulator implements the extended-particle TASEP model of ribosome traffic, where every codon has its own elongation rate set by the local abundance of charged tRNA, and ribosomes queue up behind slow, rare-codon stretches. Tune the initiation rate, the baseline elongation speed, and toggle a rare-codon bottleneck to watch polysome density, protein output, and queue length respond in real time.