Effect of dinucleotides on wheat germ translation system.

The effect of ribodinucleoside monophosphates on total protein synthesis was studied in a wheat germ cell-free system, using brome mosaic virus (BMV) RNA as a messenger. Dinucleotides inhibit total protein synthesis to different extents. Of those tested the most inhibitory is CpA. The inhibitory effect of dinucleotides is due to their adverse effect on initiation and not on elongation of polypeptide synthesis. It seems that the dinucleotides complementary to the initiation codon are able to compete with the initiator tRNA during initiation of protein synthesis. The comparison of the effect exerted by different dinucleotides suggests that under conditions of the in vitro protein synthesis RNA 4 is an mRNA molecule with the initiation codon and its immediate neighbourhood being exposed.