Heterologous Stop Codon Readthrough of Metazoan Readthrough Candidates in Yeast

• Main Authors: Jungreis, Irwin (Contributor), Kellis, Manolis (Contributor), Chan, Clara Sophia (Contributor)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Biology (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mathematics (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Public Library of Science, 2013-07-12T16:54:33Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

Recent analysis of genomic signatures in mammals, flies, and worms indicates that functional translational stop codon readthrough is considerably more abundant in metazoa than previously recognized, but this analysis provides only limited clues about the function or mechanism of readthrough. If an mRNA known to be read through in one species is also read through in another, perhaps these questions can be studied in a simpler setting. With this end in mind, we have investigated whether some of the readthrough genes in human, fly, and worm also exhibit readthrough when expressed in S. cerevisiae. We found that readthrough was highest in a gene with a post-stop hexamer known to trigger readthrough, while other metazoan readthrough genes exhibit borderline readthrough in S. cerevisiae.
National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (5U54HG004555-03)