Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access originally published online on September 29, 2006
Nucleic Acids Research 2006 34(18):5291-5299; doi:10.1093/nar/gkl526
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Nucleic Acids Research, 2006, Vol. 34, No. 18 5291-5299
© 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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An evolutionary ‘intermediate state’ of mitochondrial translation systems found in Trichinella species of parasitic nematodes: co-evolution of tRNA and EF-Tu
1 Department of Bioscience and Biotechnology, Okayama University 3-1-1 Tsushimanaka, Okayama 700-8530, Japan 2 Department of Biomedical Chemistry, The University of Tokyo 7-3-1 Hongo, Tokyo 113-0033, Japan 3 Department of Parasitology, Hirosaki University School of Medicine 5, Zafu-cho, Hirosaki, Aomori 036-8562, Japan 4 Department of Medical Technology, Hirosaki University Hriosaki, Aomori 036-8564, Japan
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +81 86 251 8220; Fax: +81 86 251 8219; Email: ohtsuk{at}cc.okayama-u.ac.jp
Received May 19, 2006. Revised July 5, 2006. Accepted July 8, 2006.
EF-Tu delivers aminoacyl-tRNAs to ribosomes in the translation system. However, unusual truncations found in some animal mitochondrial tRNAs seem to prevent recognition by a canonical EF-Tu. We showed previously that the chromadorean nematode has two distinct EF-Tus, one of which (EF-Tu1) binds only to T-armless aminoacyl-tRNAs and the other (EF-Tu2) binds to D-armless Ser-tRNAs. Neither of the EF-Tus can bind to canonical cloverleaf tRNAs. In this study, by analyzing the translation system of enoplean nematode Trichinella species, we address how EF-Tus and tRNAs have evolved from the canonical structures toward those of the chromadorean translation system. Trichinella mitochondria possess three types of tRNAs: cloverleaf tRNAs, which do not exist in chromadorean nematode mitochondria; T-armless tRNAs; and D-armless tRNAs. We found two mitochondrial EF-Tu species, EF-Tu1 and EF-Tu2, in Trichinella britovi. T.britovi EF-Tu2 could bind to only D-armless Ser-tRNA, as Caenorhabditis elegans EF-Tu2 does. In contrast to the case of C.elegans EF-Tu1, however, T.britovi EF-Tu1 bound to all three types of tRNA present in Trichinella mitochondria. These results suggest that Trichinella mitochondrial translation system, and particularly the tRNA-binding specificity of EF-Tu1, could be an intermediate state between the canonical system and the chromadorean nematode mitochondrial system.
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