Comprehensive identification of translation start sites by tetracycline-inhibited ribosome profiling
Kenji Nakahigashi, Yuki Takai, Michiko Kimura, Nozomi Abe, Toru Nakayashiki, Yuh Shiwa, Hirofumi Yoshikawa, Barry L. Wanner, Yasushi Ishihama and Hirotada Mori
DNA Res (2016) online: March 23, 2016
The precise determination of protein coding genes in bacteria has proven to be difficult, and this paper presents an additional approach to further elucidate the translation start sites of expressed genes in bacteria. The authors used tetracycline-inhibited ribosome profiling to confirm the translation sites of e. coli. The tetracycline inhibits translation by preventing the stable binding of tRNA to the ribosome.
The approach showed that start sites identified here correspond >70% of the start site changes in the latest (2014) GenBank annotation record, indicating a good level of sensitivity. They used β-galactosidase gene fusions to confirm new translation start sites, and employed proteomics to further confirm by selectively enriching N-terminal peptides after tryptic digestion and LC-MS identification of peptides.
They also discovered over 300 translation start sites within non-coding, intergenic regions of the genome, which could correspond to pseudogenes, small peptides or have unknown roles. |