Natural reassignment of CUU and CUA sense codons to alanine in Ashbya mitochondria.

ABSTRACT: The discovery of diverse codon reassignment events has demonstrated that the canonical genetic code is not universal. Studying coding reassignment at the molecular level is critical for understanding genetic code evolution, and provides clues to genetic code manipulation in synthetic biology. Here we report a novel reassignment event in the mitochondria of Ashbya (Eremothecium) gossypii, a filamentous-growing plant pathogen related to yeast (Saccharomycetaceae). Bioinformatics studies of conserved positions in mitochondrial DNA-encoded proteins suggest that CUU and CUA codons correspond to alanine in A. gossypii, instead of leucine in the standard code or threonine in yeast mitochondria. Reassignment of CUA to Ala was confirmed at the protein level by mass spectrometry. We further demonstr

SUBMITTER: Ling J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3874161 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature