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The structural basis for specific decoding of AUA by isoleucine tRNA on the ribosome

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology volume 20, pages 641–643 (2013)Cite this article

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Abstract

Decoding of the AUA isoleucine codon in bacteria and archaea requires modification of a C in the anticodon wobble position of the isoleucine tRNA. Here, we report the crystal structure of the archaeal tRNA2Ile, which contains the modification agmatidine in its anticodon, in complex with the AUA codon on the 70S ribosome. The structure illustrates how agmatidine confers codon specificity for AUA over AUG.

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Figure 1: Decoding of the isoleucine AUA codon in prokaryotes.
Figure 2: The role of the agmatidine modification in decoding.
Figure 3: Predicted implications of this structure.

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Acknowledgements

We thank A. McCarthy and S. Brockhauser at European Synchrotron Radiation Facility ID14.4 for facilitating data collection. This work was supported by the Medical Research Council, UK, grant U105184332 (V.R.), the Wellcome Trust (V.R.), the Agouron Institute (V.R.) and the Louis-Jeantet Foundation (V.R.), and grant GM17151 from the US National Institutes of Health (U.L.R.). Support was also received from the Gates-Cambridge scholarship and Peterhouse (R.V.) and from Boehringer Ingelheim (C.N.).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK

    Rebecca M Voorhees, Cajetan Neubauer & V Ramakrishnan

  2. Department of Biology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Debabrata Mandal, Caroline Köhrer & Uttam L RajBhandary

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  1. Rebecca M Voorhees
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  2. Debabrata Mandal
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  3. Cajetan Neubauer
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  4. Caroline Köhrer
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  5. Uttam L RajBhandary
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  6. V Ramakrishnan
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Contributions

D.M. and C.K. purified tRNA substrates; R.M.V. and C.N. grew crystals, collected data, built and refined the structure, and analyzed the model; R.M.V., C.K., U.L.R. and V.R. wrote and edited the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Uttam L RajBhandary or V Ramakrishnan.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Voorhees, R., Mandal, D., Neubauer, C. et al. The structural basis for specific decoding of AUA by isoleucine tRNA on the ribosome. Nat Struct Mol Biol 20, 641–643 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nsmb.2545

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