Journal Article

New Directions for Understanding the Codon Redefinition Required for Selenocysteine Incorporation

Copeland, Paul R., Howard, Michael T.

2019

Overview

The fact that selenocysteine (Sec) is delivered to the elongating ribosome by a tRNA that recognizes a UGA stop codon makes it unique and a thorn in the side of what was originally thought to be a universal genetic code. The mechanism by which this redefinition occurs has been slowly coming to light over the past 30 years, but key questions remain. This review seeks to highlight the prominent mechanistic questions that will guide the direction of work in the near future. These questions arise from two major aspects of Sec incorporation: (1) novel functions for the Sec insertion sequence (SECIS) that resides in all selenoprotein mRNAs and (2) the myriad of RNA-binding proteins, both known and yet to be discovered, that act in concert to modify the translation elongation process to allow Sec incorporation.

• Publisher: Springer US,Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Animals / Biochemistry / Biomedical and Life Sciences / Biotechnology / Codon, Terminator / Elongation / Genetic code / Humans / Incorporation / Insertion / Life Sciences / messenger RNA / Nucleic acids / Nutrition / Oncology / Peptide Chain Elongation, Translational - genetics / Questions / Ribonucleic acid / Ribosomes / RNA / RNA-binding protein / RNA-binding proteins / RNA-Binding Proteins - genetics / RNA-Binding Proteins - metabolism / Selenocysteine / Selenocysteine - genetics / Selenocysteine - metabolism / selenoproteins / Selenoproteins - biosynthesis / Selenoproteins - genetics / Stop codon / transfer RNA / translation (genetics) / Translation elongation / transposons / tRNA