Physiological levels of normal tRNA(CAGGln) can effect partial suppression of amber mutations in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

W. A. Weiss, I. Edelman, M. R. Culbertson, E. C. Friedberg

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

32 Scopus citations

Abstract

A number of ciliated protozoa are known to read the stop codons UAA and UAG as sense codons that specify glutamine during protein synthesis. In considering evolutionary mechanisms for this curious divergence from the standard genetic code, we propose the existence of progenitor tRNAs for glutamine that can weakly suppress UAA and UAG codons. It has been previously shown that multicopy plasmids that overexpress normal tRNA(CAAGln) and tRNA(CAGGln) genes from the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae can partially suppress a number of yeast ochre and amber mutations, respectively. In the present study we show that the tRNA(CAGGln) gene can also function as a weak amber suppressor when expressed in cells at physiological levels. This observation is consistent with a role of tRNA(CAGGln) as an evolutionary progenitor of tRNAs that strongly decode UAG codons.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)8031-8034
Number of pages4
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume84
Issue number22
DOIs
StatePublished - Nov 1987

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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