Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
J Mol Biol. 2010 Feb 26;396(3):821-31. doi: 10.1016/j.jmb.2009.12.018. Epub 2009 Dec 21.
tRNA isodecoders share the same anticodon but have differences in their body sequence. An unexpected result from genome sequencing projects is the identification of a large number of tRNA isodecoder genes in mammalian genomes. In the reference human genome, more than 270 isodecoder genes are present among the approximately 450 tRNA genes distributed among 49 isoacceptor families. Whether sequence diversity among isodecoder tRNA genes reflects functional variability is an open question. To address this, we developed a method to quantify the efficiency of tRNA isodecoders in stop-codon suppression in human cell lines. First, a green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene that contains a single UAG stop codon at two distinct locations is introduced. GFP is only produced when a tRNA suppressor containing CUA anticodon is co-transfected with the GFP gene. The suppression efficiency is examined for 31 tRNA isodecoders (all contain CUA anticodon), 21 derived from four isoacceptor families of tRNASer genes, 7 from five families of tRNALeu genes, and 3 from three families of tRNAAla genes. We found that isodecoder tRNAs display a large difference in their suppression efficiency. Among those with above background suppression activity, differences of up to 20-fold were observed. We were able to tune tRNA suppression efficiency by subtly adjusting the tRNA sequence and inter-convert poor suppressors into potent ones. We also demonstrate that isodecoder tRNAs with varying suppression efficiencies have similar stability and exhibit similar levels of aminoacylation in vivo. Our results indicate that naturally occurring tRNA isodecoders can have large functional variations and suggest that some tRNA isodecoders may perform a function distinct from translation.
tRNA 同功密码子具有相同的反密码子,但在其体序列上存在差异。基因组测序项目的一个意外结果是,在哺乳动物基因组中鉴定出大量 tRNA 同功密码子基因。在参考人类基因组中,在分布于 49 个同工接受体家族的约 450 个 tRNA 基因中,存在超过 270 个同功密码子基因。同功密码子 tRNA 基因之间的序列多样性是否反映功能变异性是一个悬而未决的问题。为了解决这个问题,我们开发了一种方法来量化人细胞系中 tRNA 同功密码子在终止密码子抑制中的效率。首先,引入一个绿色荧光蛋白(GFP)基因,该基因在两个不同位置包含一个单一的 UAG 终止密码子。只有当含有 CUA 反密码子的 tRNA 抑制剂与 GFP 基因共转染时,才会产生 GFP。我们检查了 31 个 tRNA 同功密码子(均含有 CUA 反密码子)、21 个来自四个 tRNASer 基因同工接受体家族、7 个来自五个 tRNALeu 基因家族和 3 个来自三个 tRNAAla 基因家族的抑制效率。我们发现同功密码子 tRNA 在其抑制效率上存在很大差异。在具有背景抑制活性的那些中,观察到高达 20 倍的差异。我们能够通过微妙调整 tRNA 序列来调整 tRNA 抑制效率,并将低效抑制剂转化为高效抑制剂。我们还证明,具有不同抑制效率的同功密码子 tRNA 具有相似的稳定性,并在体内表现出相似的氨酰化水平。我们的结果表明,天然存在的 tRNA 同功密码子可能具有很大的功能变异性,并表明一些 tRNA 同功密码子可能具有不同于翻译的功能。
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