Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access originally published online on October 19, 2006
Nucleic Acids Research 2006 34(20):5800-5814; doi:10.1093/nar/gkl751
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Nucleic Acids Research, 2006, Vol. 34, No. 20 5800-5814
© 2006 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Stability of the L12 stalk in ribosomes from mesophilic and (hyper)thermophilic Archaea and Bacteria
Biocenter, Division of Medical Biochemistry, Innsbruck Medical University Fritz-Pregl-Strasse 3, 6020, Innsbruck, Austria 1 Institute of Protein Research, RAS, Institutskaya 4 142290, Pushchino, Russia
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +43 512 9003 70334/70335; Fax: +43 512 9003 73110; Email: Dmitriy.Shcherbakov{at}i-med.ac.at
Received August 6, 2006. Revised September 23, 2006. Accepted September 23, 2006.
The ribosomal stalk complex, consisting of one molecule of L10 and four or six molecules of L12, is attached to 23S rRNA via protein L10. This complex forms the so-called L12 stalk on the 50S ribosomal subunit. Ribosomal protein L11 binds to the same region of 23S rRNA and is located at the base of the L12 stalk. The L12 stalk plays a key role in the interaction of the ribosome with translation factors. In this study stalk complexes from mesophilic and (hyper)thermophilic species of the archaeal genus Methanococcus and from the Archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus, as well as from the Bacteria Escherichia coli, Geobacillus stearothermophilus and Thermus thermophilus, were overproduced in E.coli and purified under non-denaturing conditions. Using filter-binding assays the affinities of the archaeal and bacterial complexes to their specific 23S rRNA target site were analyzed at different pH, ionic strength and temperature. Affinities of both archaeal and bacterial complexes for 23S rRNA vary by more than two orders of magnitude, correlating very well with the growth temperatures of the organisms. A cooperative effect of binding to 23S rRNA of protein L11 and the L10/L124 complex from mesophilic and thermophilic Archaea was shown to be temperature-dependent.