UMMS Affiliation
Department of Microbiology and Physiological Systems; Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences
Publication Date
2021-04-20
Document Type
Article
Disciplines
Amino Acids, Peptides, and Proteins | Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology | Bioinformatics | Fungi | Genetics and Genomics | Microbiology | Nucleic Acids, Nucleotides, and Nucleosides
Abstract
Translation of mRNA into a polypeptide is terminated when the release factor eRF1 recognizes a UAA, UAG, or UGA stop codon in the ribosomal A site and stimulates nascent peptide release. However, stop codon readthrough can occur when a near-cognate tRNA outcompetes eRF1 in decoding the stop codon, resulting in the continuation of the elongation phase of protein synthesis. At the end of a conventional mRNA coding region, readthrough allows translation into the mRNA 3'-UTR. Previous studies with reporter systems have shown that the efficiency of termination or readthrough is modulated by cis-acting elements other than stop codon identity, including two nucleotides 5' of the stop codon, six nucleotides 3' of the stop codon in the ribosomal mRNA channel, and stem-loop structures in the mRNA 3'-UTR. It is unknown whether these elements are important at a genome-wide level and whether other mRNA features proximal to the stop codon significantly affect termination and readthrough efficiencies in vivo. Accordingly, we carried out ribosome profiling analyses of yeast cells expressing wild-type or temperature-sensitive eRF1 and developed bioinformatics strategies to calculate readthrough efficiency, and to identify mRNA and peptide features which influence that efficiency. We found that the stop codon (nt +1 to +3), the nucleotide after it (nt +4), the codon in the P site (nt -3 to -1), and 3'-UTR length are the most influential features in the control of readthrough efficiency, while nts +5 to +9 had milder effects. Additionally, we found low readthrough genes to have shorter 3'-UTRs compared to high readthrough genes in cells with thermally inactivated eRF1, while this trend was reversed in wild-type cells. Together, our results demonstrated the general roles of known regulatory elements in genome-wide regulation and identified several new mRNA or peptide features affecting the efficiency of translation termination and readthrough.
Keywords
Ribosomes, Nucleotides, Messenger RNA, Genetic footprinting, Yeast, Transfer RNA, Gene expression, Translation termination
Rights and Permissions
Copyright © 2021 Mangkalaphiban et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
DOI of Published Version
10.1371/journal.pgen.1009538
Source
Mangkalaphiban K, He F, Ganesan R, Wu C, Baker R, Jacobson A. Transcriptome-wide investigation of stop codon readthrough in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. PLoS Genet. 2021 Apr 20;17(4):e1009538. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1009538. PMID: 33878104; PMCID: PMC8087045. Link to article on publisher's site
Journal/Book/Conference Title
PLoS genetics
Related Resources
PubMed ID
33878104
Repository Citation
Mangkalaphiban K, He F, Ganesan R, Wu C, Baker RE, Jacobson A. (2021). Transcriptome-wide investigation of stop codon readthrough in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Open Access Publications by UMMS Authors. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1009538. Retrieved from https://escholarship.umassmed.edu/oapubs/4706
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Included in
Amino Acids, Peptides, and Proteins Commons, Biochemistry, Biophysics, and Structural Biology Commons, Bioinformatics Commons, Fungi Commons, Genetics and Genomics Commons, Microbiology Commons, Nucleic Acids, Nucleotides, and Nucleosides Commons