Anticodon Recognition and Discrimination by the Alpha-Helix Cage Domain of Class I Lysyl-tRNA Synthetase

Authors

Jeffrey D. Levengood, The Ohio State University
Hervé Roy, The Ohio State University
Ryuichiro Ishitani, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Dieter Söll, Yale University
Osamu Nureki, Tokyo Institute of Technology
Michael Ibba, Chapman UniversityFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-31-2007

Abstract

Aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases are normally found in one of two mutually exclusive structural classes, the only known exception being lysyl-tRNA synthetase which exists in both classes I (LysRS1) and II (LysRS2). Differences in tRNA acceptor stem recognition between LysRS1 and LysRS2 do not drastically impact cellular aminoacylation levels, focusing attention on the mechanism of tRNA anticodon recognition by LysRS1. On the basis of structure-based sequence alignments, seven tRNA^Lys anticodon variants and seven LysRS1 anticodon binding site variants were selected for analysis of the Pyrococcus horikoshii LysRS1-tRNA^Lys docking model. LysRS1 specifically recognized the bases at positions 35 and 36, but not that at position 34. Aromatic residues form stacking interactions with U34 and U35, and aminoacylation kinetics also identified direct interactions between Arg502 and both U35 and U36. Tyr491 was also found to interact with U36, and the Y491E variant exhibited significant improvement compared to the wild type in aminoacylation of a tRNA^LysUUG mutant. Refinement of the LysRS1-tRNA^Lys docking model based upon these data suggested that anticodon recognition by LysRS1 relies on considerably fewer interactions than that by LysRS2, providing a structural basis for the more significant role of the anticodon in tRNA recognition by the class II enzyme. To date, only glutamyl-tRNA synthetase (GluRS) has been found to contain an alpha-helix cage anticodon binding domain homologous to that of LysRS1, and these data now suggest that specificity for the anticodon of tRNA^Lys could have been acquired through relatively few changes to the corresponding domain of an ancestral GluRS enzyme.

Comments

This article was originally published in Biochemistry, volume 46, in 2007. https://doi.org/10.1021/bi700815a

Recommended Citation

Levengood, J., Roy, H., Ishitani, R., Söll, D., Nureki, O., and Ibba, M. (2007) Anticodon recognition and discrimination by the alpha-helix cage domain of class I lysyl-tRNA synthetase. Biochemistry 46, 11033-11038. https://doi.org/10.1021/bi700815a

Copyright

American Chemical Society