Poster abstracts
Poster number 62 submitted by Lanqing Ying
Global analysis of translation processivity in E. coli
Lanqing Ying (Department of Microbiology and Center for RNA Biology, The Ohio State University), William Baez (Department of Physics and Center for RNA Biology, The Ohio State University), Ralf Bundschuh (Department of Physics and Center for RNA Biology, The Ohio State University), Kurt Fredrick (Department of Microbiology and Center for RNA Biology, The Ohio State University)
Abstract:
During translation, the ribosome sometimes fails to complete synthesis of full-length protein product. Based on previous reporter gene studies, mutations that slow down elongation reduce translation processivity. A possible explanation is that longer decoding dwell time causes a higher frequency of peptidyl-tRNA drop-off in these mutant ribosomes. Here, we used ribosome profiling to globally measure the translation processivity in wild-type and various mutant strains. In contrast to the earlier predictions, we have found that translation processivity is generally independent of decoding rate. Based on our findings, we infer that processivity errors mainly occur during the translocation step of elongation.
Keywords: protein synthesis, decoding , tRNA