Sequence requirements for ribosome stalling by the arginine attenuator peptide.

ABSTRACT: The 5' regions of eukaryotic mRNAs often contain upstream open reading frames (uORFs). The Neurospora crassa arg-2 uORF encodes the 24-residue arginine attenuator peptide (AAP). This regulatory uORF-encoded peptide, which is evolutionarily conserved in fungal transcripts specifying an arginine biosynthetic enzyme, functions as a nascent peptide within the ribosomal tunnel and negatively regulates gene expression. The nascent AAP causes ribosomes to stall at the uORF stop codon in response to arginine, thus, blocking ribosomes from reaching the ARG-2 initiation codon. Here scanning mutagenesis with alanine and proline was performed to systematically determine which AAP residues were important for conferring regulation. Changing many of the most highly conserved residues (Asp-12, Tyr-13, Lys

SUBMITTER: Spevak CC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3003393 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature