Polylysyl transfer ribonucleic acid, free of lysyl-tRNA, has been isolated and its characteristics in an Escherichiu cofi polypeptide-synthesizing system in vitro have been studied. Ribosomes obtained from frozen E. coli cells were washed in 0.5 M NH&l and assayed at MgCla concentrations of at least 0.01 M. Binding of this peptidyl-tRNA to ribosomes occurs in the presence of templates containin...

We have investigated the influence of structures in the tRNA anticodon loop and stem on the ability of the anticodon to discriminate among codons. We had previously shown that anticodon UCC, when placed in the structural context of tRNA(Gly1) from Escherichia coli, discriminated efficiently between the glycine codons, as required by the wobble rules. Thus, this anticodon read GGA and GGG but di...

Selenocysteine (Sec) tRNA (tRNA([Ser]Sec)) serves as both the site of Sec biosynthesis and the adapter molecule for donation of this amino acid to protein. The consequences on selenoprotein biosynthesis of overexpressing either the wild type or a mutant tRNA([Ser]Sec) lacking the modified base, isopentenyladenosine, in its anticodon loop were examined by introducing multiple copies of the corre...

Selenocysteine (Sec) is translationally incorporated into proteins in response to the UGA codon. The tRNA specific to Sec (tRNA(Sec)) is first ligated with serine by seryl-tRNA synthetase (SerRS). In the present study, we determined the 3.1 Å crystal structure of the tRNA(Sec) from the bacterium Aquifex aeolicus, in complex with the heterologous SerRS from the archaeon Methanopyrus kandleri. Th...

Bacterial genomic islands are often flanked by tRNA genes, which act as sites for the integration of foreign DNA into the host chromosome. For example, Bacillus cereus ATCC14579 contains a pathogenicity island flanked by a predicted pseudo-tRNA, tRNA(Other), which does not function in translation. Deletion of tRNA(Other) led to significant changes in cell wall morphology and antibiotic resistan...

Emerging evidence points to roles for tRNA modifications and tRNA abundance in cellular stress responses. While isolated instances of stress-induced tRNA degradation have been reported, we sought to assess the effects of stress on tRNA levels at a systems level. To this end, we developed a next-generation sequencing method that exploits the paucity of ribonucleoside modifications at the 3'-end ...

tRNA precursors, which are transcribed by RNA polymerase III, undergo end-maturation, splicing, and base modifications. Hypomodified tRNAs, such as tRNA(Val(AAC)), lacking 7-methylguanosine and 5-methylcytidine modifications, are subject to degradation by a rapid tRNA decay pathway. Here we searched for genes which, when overexpressed, restored stability of tRNA(Val(AAC)) molecules in a modific...

Reports of nuclear tRNA aminoacylation and its role in tRNA nuclear export (Lund and Dahlberg, 1998; Sarkar et al., 1999; Grosshans et al., 20001) have led to the prediction that there should be nuclear pools of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases. We report that in budding yeast there are nuclear pools of tyrosyl-tRNA synthetase, Tys1p. By sequence alignments we predicted a Tys1p nuclear localization s...

Selenocysteine (Sec)-decoding archaea and eukaryotes employ a unique route of Sec-tRNA(Sec) synthesis in which O-phosphoseryl-tRNA(Sec) kinase (PSTK) phosphorylates Ser-tRNA(Sec) to produce the O-phosphoseryl-tRNA(Sec) (Sep-tRNA(Sec)) substrate that Sep-tRNA:Sec-tRNA synthase (SepSecS) converts to Sec-tRNA(Sec). This study presents a biochemical characterization of Methanocaldococcus jannaschii...

Activation of amino acid homocysteine was compared with that of methionine in rabbit crude liver extracts and purified multi-enzyme complex of aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases. Activation was studied by measuring the incorporation of radioactive amino acid into unlabelled trichloroacetic-acid insoluble materials in the absence of protein synthesis. Homocysteine synthetase activity was found in the cr...