title: Protein mistranslation: friend or foe?
abstract: The translation of genes into functional proteins involves error. Mistranslation is a known cause of disease, but, surprisingly, recent studies suggest that certain organisms from all domains of life have evolved diverse pathways that increase their tolerance of translational error. Although the reason for these high error rates are not yet clear, evidence suggests that increased mistranslation may have a role in the generation of diversity within the proteome and other adaptive functions. Error rates are regulated, and there appears to be an optimal mistranslation rate that varies by organism and environmental condition. Advances in unbiased interrogation of error types and experiments involving wild organisms may help our understanding of the potentially adaptive roles for protein translation errors.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), c/Baldiri Reixac 10, Barcelona, 08028, Catalonia, Spain; Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA), Pg. Lluís Companys 23, Barcelona, 08010, Catalonia, Spain.
authors.forename: Liuís
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ribas de Pouplana
authors.affiliation: RNA Biology Laboratory, Department of Biology and CESAM, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal.
authors.forename: Manuel A S
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Santos
authors.affiliation: Centre for Infectious Diseases Research, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Jun-Hao
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, University of Maryland Baltimore County, Baltimore, MD, USA.
authors.forename: Philip J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Farabaugh
authors.affiliation: Centre for Infectious Diseases Research, Tsinghua University School of Medicine, Beijing, China; Collaborative Innovation Center for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Disease, Hangzhou, China. Electronic address: bjavid@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Babak
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Javid
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D014644:Genetic Variation; D006801:Humans; D014176:Protein Biosynthesis; D011506:Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D020543:Proteome / Q000096:biosynthesis*; D017393:RNA Editing / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins; D020543:Proteome
keywords: mistranslation; translational fidelity