Stop codon readthrough lessons from the tRNA anti-codon stem.

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Roland Beckmann
• Subject Area: Structural Biology ; General Genetics and Functional Genome Biology ; Biochemistry
• Term: since 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 514613075

If you imagine a gene as a sentence starting with a capital letter and ending with a period, and a genome as a book telling an entire story, it has recently been shown that specific organisms exist where extra periods infiltrated their sentences. As a result, readers (in this case ribosomes) are confused as to where these sentences really end and the story becomes disjointed. We have discovered a molecular mechanism that these organisms developed to allow the reader/ribosomes to go through their sentences as if there were no extra periods. The sentences are so specifically encrypted that readers/ribosomes of no other organisms but those very few can decipher the story in a proper way. The trick is in the nature and length of the anti-codon stem of readthrough-inducing tRNAs and mutant release factors. We have also seen these tricks to be employed in programmed stop codon readthrough in all organisms. Here, in the three-party collaboration, we will subject these critical players to an in-depth analysis and attempt to solve the structure of an 80S ribosome reading through a stop codon.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Czech Republic
• Partner Organisation: Czech Science Foundation
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Zdenek Paris; Dr. Leos Shivaya Valasek