Conflict between translation initiation and elongation in vertebrate mitochondrial genomes.

ABSTRACT: The strand-biased mutation spectrum in vertebrate mitochondrial genomes results in an AC-rich L-strand and a GT-rich H-strand. Because the L-strand is the sense strand of 12 protein-coding genes out of the 13, the third codon position is overall strongly AC-biased. The wobble site of the anticodon of the 22 mitochondrial tRNAs is either U or G to pair with the most abundant synonymous codon, with only one exception. The wobble site of Met-tRNA is C instead of U, forming the Watson-Crick match with AUG instead of AUA, the latter being much more frequent than the former. This has been attributed to a compromise between translation initiation and elongation; i.e., AUG is not only a methionine codon, but also an initiation codon, and an anticodon matching AUG will increase the initiation rate.

SUBMITTER: Xia X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1794132 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature