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Investigating tRNA abundance as a determinant of decoding speed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Pain, Chloe (2016) Investigating tRNA abundance as a determinant of decoding speed in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Master of Science by Research (MScRes) thesis, University of Kent,. (KAR id:57473)

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Abstract

There are two main points that control the rate of translation, translation initiation which controls the rate of recruitment of ribosomes to the mRNA, and translation elongation which controls the speed with which ribosomes decode the mRNA. When initiation is not limiting, ribosomal queues can build up, reducing ribosomal clearance from the start codon. The dynamics of elongation control are largely determined by the decoding speed of individual codons. One way in which the system controls the rate and efficiency of translation is through codon bias, taking advantage of the differences in decoding speed. Our aim in this study is to investigate the role of tRNA abundance in determining decoding speed for the synonymous codons of threonine.

Using Saccharomyces cerevisiae, we build codon reporter constructs where a codon optimised Renilla luciferase gene was preceded by ten codon repeats of one of the four threonine codons, in such a way that the decoding speed of the codon repeats determined the expression levels of the luciferase. Our analyses showed that the observed protein levels of RLuc correlated with the predicted order of decoding speeds, based on our knowledge of threonyl-tRNA populations, in descending order ACT, ACA, ACC and ACG. However, RNA analyses suggest that only one out of the four threonine reporters, ACG10_Rluc was limited at the level of translation thus able to report on decoding speed. Our current data suggest that decoding speed reporters based on the principle tested here are of limited usefulness, because of unanticipated interactions between codon usage and mRNA levels.

Item Type: Thesis (Master of Science by Research (MScRes))
Thesis advisor: Von der Haar, Tobias
Uncontrolled keywords: tRNA abundance decoding speed elongation translation
Divisions: Divisions > Division of Natural Sciences > Biosciences
Depositing User: Users 1 not found.
Date Deposited: 25 Sep 2016 13:00 UTC
Last Modified: 19 Dec 2022 05:16 UTC
Resource URI: https://kar.kent.ac.uk/id/eprint/57473 (The current URI for this page, for reference purposes)

University of Kent Author Information

Pain, Chloe.

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