Heterogeneity of Stop Codon Readthrough in Single Bacterial Cells and Implications for Population Fitness.

ABSTRACT: Gene expression noise (heterogeneity) leads to phenotypic diversity among isogenic individual cells. Our current understanding of gene expression noise is mostly limited to transcription, as separating translational noise from transcriptional noise has been challenging. It also remains unclear how translational heterogeneity originates. Using a transcription-normalized reporter system, we discovered that stop codon readthrough is heterogeneous among single cells, and individual cells with higher UGA readthrough grow faster from stationary phase. Our work also revealed that individual cells with lower protein synthesis levels exhibited higher UGA readthrough, which was confirmed with ribosome-targeting antibiotics (e.g., chloramphenicol). Further experiments and mathematical modeling sugges

SUBMITTER: Fan Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5591071 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature