Nakamura Y, Ito K
Department of Tumor Biology, The Institute of Medical Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan.
Genes Cells. 1998 May;3(5):265-78. doi: 10.1046/j.1365-2443.1998.00191.x.
Translation termination requires two codon-specific protein-release factors in prokaryotes and one factor in eukaryotes. The underlying mechanism for stop codon recognition, as well as the biological meaning of the conservation of one or two release factors in the evolutionary kingdoms, are not known. The recent discovery of release factor genes and the molecular mimicry between translational factors and tRNA provide us with clues to the mechanisms of how proteins read the stop codon and terminate translation, shedding some light on the evolutionary aspect of release factors.
在原核生物中，翻译终止需要两种密码子特异性的蛋白质释放因子，而在真核生物中则需要一种。目前尚不清楚终止密码子识别的潜在机制，以及在进化王国中保留一种或两种释放因子的生物学意义。释放因子基因的最新发现以及翻译因子与tRNA之间的分子模拟为我们提供了关于蛋白质如何读取终止密码子并终止翻译机制的线索，这也为释放因子的进化方面提供了一些启示。
