Among these processes, translational protein quality control is performed by the Ribosome-bound Quality Control complex (RQC), which recognizes nascent peptides translated from aberrant mRNAs, polyubiquitylates these aberrant peptides, extracts them from the stalled 60S subunit and finally escorts them to the proteasome for degradation. In this review, we focus on the mechanism of action of the RQC complex from stalled 60S binding to aberrant peptide delivery to the proteasome and describe the cellular consequences of a deficiency in the RQC pathway, such as aberrant protein aggregation.