Ancient origin and high diversity of zymocin-like killer toxins in the budding yeast subphylum
Padraic G. Heneghan,
Letal I. Salzberg,
Eoin Ó Cinnéide
et al.
Abstract:Zymocin is a well-characterized killer toxin secreted by some strains of the yeast Kluyveromyces lactis. It acts by cleaving a specific tRNA in sensitive recipient cells. Zymocin is encoded by a killer plasmid or virus-like element (VLE), which is a linear DNA molecule located in the cytosol. We hypothesized that a tRNA-cleaving toxin similar to zymocin may have caused the three parallel changes to the nuclear genetic code that occurred during yeast evolution, in which the codon CUG became translated as Ser or… Show more
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