Medical Research Council, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 0QH, UK.
Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol. 2012 Feb 15;13(3):168-82. doi: 10.1038/nrm3286.
Designer amino acids, beyond the canonical 20 that are normally used by cells, can now be site-specifically encoded into proteins in cells and organisms. This is achieved using 'orthogonal' aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase-tRNA pairs that direct amino acid incorporation in response to an amber stop codon (UAG) placed in a gene of interest. Using this approach, it is now possible to study biology in vitro and in vivo with an increased level of molecular precision. This has allowed new biological insights into protein conformational changes, protein interactions, elementary processes in signal transduction and the role of post-translational modifications.
现在，设计氨基酸（除了细胞正常使用的 20 种常见氨基酸之外的氨基酸）可以通过使用“正交”氨酰-tRNA 合成酶-tRNA 对，在细胞和生物体中实现对蛋白质的定点编码，这些氨酰-tRNA 对可以特异性地识别琥珀终止密码子（UAG）并将相应的氨基酸掺入到感兴趣的基因中。利用这种方法，现在可以在体外和体内以更高的分子精度研究生物学。这使得人们对蛋白质构象变化、蛋白质相互作用、信号转导中的基本过程以及翻译后修饰的作用有了新的生物学认识。
