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Research Paper
Synthesis of Cysteinyl-tRNACys by A Prolyl-tRNA Synthetase
Chun-Mei Zhang and Ya-Ming Hou
volume 1 | issue 1
may/june 2004Pages: 35 - 41
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The question of how cysteinyl-tRNACys is synthesized in organisms that lack a canonical cysteinyl-tRNA synthetase (CysRS) is an important open question in understanding protein synthesis. The prolyl-tRNA synthetase (ProRS) of wide ranging organisms has the ability to mis-activate cysteine without editing. This raises the question of whether the mis-activated cysteine can be charged to tRNACys to synthesize the correctly matched cys-tRNACys, which may serve as an option in organisms that lack the conventional CysRS. Despite intense searches, such an activity has not been found. Here we show that the ProRS of the radiation-resistant bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans has the ability to charge cysteine to tRNACys and to retain the cognate pair cys-tRNACys stably without editing. The cysteinylation by D. radiodurans ProRS is not the major route for synthesis of cys-tRNACys, however, because the organism encodes the conventional CysRS. Nonetheless, the synthesis of cys-tRNACys in vitro is important and it is unlike previously documented mis-charging of Methanocaldococcus jannaschii ProRS, which synthesizes cys-tRNAPro but not cys-tRNACys. We suggest that the cysteinylation activity of D. radiodruans ProRS may, in the presence of additional factors, offer one option to organisms that lack the conventional CysRS to synthesize cysteinyl-tRNACys in vivo.
We now provide open access to journal articles published online for one year or more. This article may be downloaded at the following link:
Download PDF If the document does not open, please right-click on the link (control-click on a Macintosh) and select the option to save the file to disk.