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SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY

Foldamers wave to the ribosome

An Author Correction to this article was published on 10 July 2018

This article has been updated

Ribosomes have now been shown to accept certain initiator tRNAs acylated with aromatic foldamer–dipeptides thereby enabling the translation of a peptide or protein with a short aromatic foldamer at the N-terminus. Some foldamer–peptide hybrids could be cyclized to generate macrocycles that present conformationally restricted peptide loops.

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Fig. 1: Engineered initiator tRNAs acylated with foldamer–dipeptide appendages can initiate translation of foldamer–peptide and foldamer–protein products.

Change history

  • 10 July 2018

    In the News & Views ‘Foldamers wave to the ribosome’, multiple changes to the main text were required. In paragraph 2 “whose monomer sequence is truly defined” should have read “whose monomer sequence is both diverse and truly defined” and “Truly sequence-defined...” should have read “Diverse and truly sequence defined…”. In the penultimate paragraph, ‘appendages 5–9’ should have been “appendages 5 and 7–9”; in the sentence starting “Based on these criteria...”, QPQ should have been QQQ and vice versa; and the whole sentence starting “What is interesting...” needed revising to “What is interesting is that an alternating sequence with a terminal P monomer appears essential: PQPQ is unfolded and an initiator tRNA carrying PQPQ–Gly–Phe initiates translation, whereas QPQPQ is folded and does not.” Furthermore, the structures in Fig. 1a have been replaced to correct several errors in the chemical structures arising from missing –CH2– groups. The table in Fig. 1b also required changes: in the last two columns of row two, ‘Fast’ and ‘No’ should have read ‘Slow and ‘Yes’, respectively; in the first column of row three, ‘ND’ should have been a tick; and in the last two columns of row four, ‘Slow’ and ‘Yes’ should have read ‘Fast’ and ‘No’, respectively. Finally, a new reference ‘Milon, P. et al. EMBO Rep. 11, 312–316 (2010).’ has been added to the reference list at number 13 and cited in the fifth paragraph, the references list has been renumbered accordingly.

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Correspondence to Alanna Schepartz.

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Schepartz, A. Foldamers wave to the ribosome. Nature Chem 10, 377–379 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-018-0036-5

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