UGA is read as tryptophan in Mycoplasma capricolum.

Abstract

UGA is a nonsense or termination (opal) codon throughout prokaryotes and eukaryotes. However, mitochondria use not only UGG but also UGA as a tryptophan codon. Here, we show that UGA also codes for tryptophan in Mycoplasma capricolum, a wall-less bacterium having a genome only 20-25% the size of the Escherichia coil genome. This conclusion is based on the following evidence. First, the nucleotide sequence of the S3 and L16 ribosomal protein genes from M. capricolum includes UGA codons in the reading frames; they appear at positions corresponding to tryptophan in E. coli S3 and L16. Second, a tRNA"rP gene and its product tRNA found in M. capricolum have the anticodon sequence 5' U-C-A 3', which can form a complementary base-pairing interaction with UGA.We recently have sequenced a part of the Mycoplasma capricolum ribosomal-protein gene cluster that codes for polypeptides highly homologous to the Escherichia coli ribosomal proteins S3 and L16. The sequence contains four UGA codons in the reading frames; three appear at the sites corresponding to tryptophan, and one, at a site corresponding to arginine in the E. coli proteins. No "universal" UGG codon for tryptophan has so far been found. We have also isolated a clone containing a pair of M. capricolum tRNA genes, the sequence of both of which resembles that of tRNATrp of E. coli. The anticodon sequence of one of these tRNA genes is 5'-T-C-A-3', which can base-pair with both opal codon UGA and universal tryptophan codon UGG. That of the other is 5'-C-C-A-3', which may base-pair exclusively with UGG. These two tRNA genes are expressed in the cell. All these findings suggest strongly that, in M. capricolum, UGA codes for tryptophan using the opal tRNAUCA but not tRNACCA.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION UGA Codons in M. capricolum S3 and L16 Genes. As reported in a previous paper (1), we isolated the recombinant plasmid pMCB1088 containing a 9-kilobase-pair fragment of M. capricolum DNA. The fragment contains the genes for at least nine ribosomal proteins-S3, S5, S8, S14, S17, L5, L6, L16, and L18-as deduced from its encoded protein sequences being highly homologous with the corresponding E. coli ribosomal protein sequences (refs. 1 and 2; unpublished results). Fig. 1 shows the complete nucleotide sequence of a 629-base-pair (bp) HindIII fragment which is a part of the insert of pMCB1088 (see refs. 1 and 2). The DNA corresponds to the 3' half of the S3 gene and about 90% of the L16 gene from the 5' terminus. When the M. capricolum sequences are aligned with the E. coli protein sequences (3, 4) ( Fig. 1), four UGA (opal) codons are found within the reading frames. The possibility that these UGA codons are termination signals can be excluded by their occurrence in the regions having extensive sequence homologies with the E. coli proteins. More importantly, three out of the four UGA codons appear at the positions corresponding to tryptophan in the E. coli proteins. This suggests that UGA is a sense codon, probably for tryptophan, in M. capricolum. No UGG codon for tryptop...

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