GSBS Student Publications
Title
Toeprint analysis of the positioning of translation apparatus components at initiation and termination codons of fungal mRNAs
Publication Date
2002-06-11
UMMS Affiliation
Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences; Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology; Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology
Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Life Sciences | Medicine and Health Sciences
Abstract
The ability to map the position of ribosomes and their associated factors on mRNAs is critical for an understanding of translation mechanisms. Earlier approaches to monitoring these important cellular events characterized nucleotide sequences rendered nuclease-resistant by ribosome binding. While these approaches furthered our understanding of translation initiation and ribosome pausing, the pertinent techniques were technically challenging and not widely applied. Here we describe an alternative assay for determining the mRNA sites at which ribosomes or other factors are bound. This approach uses primer extension inhibition, or "toeprinting," to map the 3' boundaries of mRNA-associated complexes. This methodology, previously used to characterize initiation mechanisms in prokaryotic and eukaryotic systems, is used here to gain an understanding of two interesting translational regulatory phenomena in the fungi Neurospora crassa and Saccharomyces cerevisiae: (a) regulation of translation in response to arginine concentration by an evolutionarily conserved upstream open reading frame, and (b) atypical termination events that occur as a consequence of the presence of premature stop codons.
DOI of Published Version
10.1016/S1046-2023(02)00013-0
Source
Methods. 2002 Feb;26(2):105-14. Link to article on publisher's site
Journal/Book/Conference Title
Methods (San Diego, Calif.)
Related Resources
PubMed ID
12054887
Repository Citation
Sachs, Matthew S.; Wang, Zhong; Gaba, Anthony; Fang, Peng; Belk, Jonathan Philip; Ganesan, Robin; Amrani, Nadia; and Jacobson, Allan, "Toeprint analysis of the positioning of translation apparatus components at initiation and termination codons of fungal mRNAs" (2002). GSBS Student Publications. 1061.
https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/gsbs_sp/1061