Abstract
NONSENSE mutations in several microorganisms exert a pleio-tropic “polar” effect, reducing the level of expression of those genes in the same Operon which lie on the operator-distal side of the mutant gene'. Although ribosomes terminate translation and are quickly discharged from the messenger when they encounter a nonsense codon2, they can efficiently re-attach to the messenger at the “start” codons of downstream genes, both in RNA phage2–5 and in E. coli6. Thus, polarity must be caused by unavailability of the messenger template beyond the nonsense codon. In RNA phage, this unavailability has been attributed to a conformational masking of the messenger2–5
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KUWANO, M., SCHLESSINGER, D. & MORSE, D. Loss of Dispensable Endonuclease Activity in Relief of Polarity by suA. Nature New Biology 231, 214–217 (1971). https://doi.org/10.1038/newbio231214a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/newbio231214a0
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