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September 22, 2019  |  

2′-O-methylation in mRNA disrupts tRNA decoding during translation elongation.

Authors: Choi, Junhong and Indrisiunaite, Gabriele and DeMirci, Hasan and Ieong, Ka-Weng and Wang, Jinfan and Petrov, Alexey and Prabhakar, Arjun and Rechavi, Gideon and Dominissini, Dan and He, Chuan and Ehrenberg, Måns and Puglisi, Joseph D

Chemical modifications of mRNA may regulate many aspects of mRNA processing and protein synthesis. Recently, 2'-O-methylation of nucleotides was identified as a frequent modification in translated regions of human mRNA, showing enrichment in codons for certain amino acids. Here, using single-molecule, bulk kinetics and structural methods, we show that 2'-O-methylation within coding regions of mRNA disrupts key steps in codon reading during cognate tRNA selection. Our results suggest that 2'-O-methylation sterically perturbs interactions of ribosomal-monitoring bases (G530, A1492 and A1493) with cognate codon-anticodon helices, thereby inhibiting downstream GTP hydrolysis by elongation factor Tu (EF-Tu) and A-site tRNA accommodation, leading to excessive rejection of cognate aminoacylated tRNAs in initial selection and proofreading. Our current and prior findings highlight how chemical modifications of mRNA tune the dynamics of protein synthesis at different steps of translation elongation.

Journal: Nature structural & molecular biology
DOI: 10.1038/s41594-018-0030-z
Year: 2018

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