“Nascent” is just a fancy word for newly-made or in-the-process-of-getting-made. You most commonly see this term used in the context of:
translation (the process of a ribosome making a protein based on mRNA instructions) – where we refer to the growing chain of amino acids as the nascent protein/peptide/polypeptide
the nascent peptide exits the ribosome through the Nascent Peptide Exit Tunnel (NPET), which holds 30-40 amino acids at once
the nascent chain can interact with the ribosomal walls in the NPET and influence translation rates (e.g. lots of proline or arginines can cause stalling)
and
transcription (the process of RNA Polymerase making a (pre-) mRNA copy of a gene (the DNA form of the protein “recipe”) – where we refer to the “nascent transcript”
scientists can use methods to isolate RNA Polymerase and sequence these transcripts to figure out what cells are actively transcribing (as opposed to just using normal RNA seq to see what mRNAs have already been made
cool free review article (free through PubMed but if you go to the publisher’s site they’ll try to paywall you…
