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Published September 20, 1996 | Published
Journal Article Open

An engineered Tetrahymena tRNA(Gln) for in vivo incorporation of unnatural amino acids into proteins by nonsense suppression

Abstract

A new tRNA, THG73, has been designed and evaluated as a vehicle for incorporating unnatural amino acids site-specifically into proteins expressed in vivo using the stop codon suppression technique. The construct is a modification of tRNAGln(CUA) from Tetrahymena thermophila, which naturally recognizes the stop codon UAG. Using electrophysiological studies of mutations at several sites of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor, it is established that THG73 represents a major improvement over previous nonsense suppressors both in terms of efficiency and fidelity of unnatural amino acid incorporation. Compared with a previous tRNA used for in vivo suppression, THG73 is as much as 100-fold less likely to be acylated by endogenous synthetases of the Xenopus oocyte. This effectively eliminates a major concern of the in vivo suppression methodology, the undesirable incorporation of natural amino acids at the suppression site. In addition, THG73 is 4-10-fold more efficient at incorporating unnatural amino acids in the oocyte system. Taken together, these two advances should greatly expand the range of applicability of the in vivo nonsense suppression methodology.

Additional Information

© 1996 by The American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Inc. Received for publication, April 1, 1996, and in revised form, June 11, 1996. This research was supported by National Institutes of Health Grants NS11756 (to H.A.L.), NS34407 (to D.A.D.), and GM48560 (to J.N.A.). The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement" in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

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August 22, 2023
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