tRNAs articles from across Nature Portfolio

The mini alanyl-tRNA synthetase of the Tupanvirus, lacking the editing and C-Ala domains, can functionally substitute for its yeast counterpart in vivo and has developed a new tRNA-binding mode in absence of C-Ala.

Analyses of in-frame stop codons in protein-coding genes of Blastocrithidia nonstop with all three stop codons reassigned reveal a mechanism for UGA reassignment in eukaryotes involving shortening of the tRNA anticodon stem and a mutant eRF1 release factor.

Structures of the human METTL1–WDR4 complex are revealed, providing molecular insights into substrate recognition, modification and catalytic regulation by the N⁷-methylguanosine methyltransferase complex.

Aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases possess unique domains. In this study the structure of the vertebrate IARS1 and EARS1 complex reveals that vertebrate IARS1 protects the DNA repair factor BRCA1 from proteolytic degradation via its UBX-fold domain.

Synthesis of peptidyl-tRNAs is challenging because there are no enzymes that can directly attach the desired peptide to tRNA. Now it has been shown that a chemoenzymatic approach based on native chemical ligation can be used for the semi-synthesis of peptidyl-tRNAs for structural/biochemical studies of arrested and non-arrested ribosome complexes.

Mitochondrial tRNAs are indispensable and yet underwent an extreme mutational erosion. The authors report the structures of a mitochondrial aaRS-tRNA complex and show how the most degenerated of all human mtRNAs is recognized by its cognate synthetase to maintain mitochondrial gene expression.