title: Different aa-tRNAs are selected uniformly on the ribosome.
abstract: Ten E. coli aminoacyl-tRNAs (aa-tRNAs) were assessed for their ability to decode cognate codons on E. coli ribosomes by using three assays that evaluate the key steps in the decoding pathway. Despite a wide variety of structural features, each aa-tRNA exhibited similar kinetic and thermodynamic properties in each assay. This surprising kinetic and thermodynamic uniformity is likely to reflect the importance of ribosome conformational changes in defining the rates and affinities of the decoding process as well as the evolutionary "tuning" of each aa-tRNA sequence to modify their individual interactions with the ribosome at each step.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Cell Biology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA.
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ledoux
authors.forename: Olke C
authors.initials: OC
authors.lastname: Uhlenbeck
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000378:metabolism*; D006160:Guanosine Triphosphate / Q000378:metabolism; D006868:Hydrolysis; D007700:Kinetics; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D010455:Peptides / Q000378:metabolism; D011485:Protein Binding; D012346:RNA, Transfer, Amino Acyl / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism*; D012270:Ribosomes / Q000378:metabolism*
chemical_list: D010455:Peptides; D012346:RNA, Transfer, Amino Acyl; D006160:Guanosine Triphosphate