Chlamydomonas reinhardtii selenocysteine tRNA[Ser]Sec

  1. MAHADEV RAO1,3,
  2. BRADLEY A. CARLSON1,
  3. SERGEY V. NOVOSELOV2,
  4. DONALD P. WEEKS2,
  5. VADIM N. GLADYSHEV2, and
  6. DOLPH L. HATFIELD1
  1. 1Section on the Molecular Biology of Selenium, Basic Research Laboratory, Center for Cancer Research, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland 20892, USA
  2. 2Department of Biochemistry, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588, USA

Abstract

Eukaryotic selenocysteine (Sec) protein insertion machinery was thought to be restricted to animals, but the occurrence of both Sec-containing proteins and the Sec insertion system was recently found in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a member of the plant kingdom. Herein, we used RT-PCR to determine the sequence of C. reinhardtii Sec tRNA[Ser]Sec, the first non-animal eukaryotic Sec tRNA[Ser]Sec sequence. Like its animal counterpart, it is 90 nucleotides in length, is aminoacylated with serine by seryl-tRNA synthetase, and decodes specifically UGA. Evolutionary analyses of known Sec tRNAs identify the C. reinhardtii form as the most diverged eukaryotic Sec tRNA[Ser]Sec and reveal a common origin for this tRNA in bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes.

Keywords

Footnotes

  • ↵3 Present address: Department of Oncology, Lombardi Cancer Center, Georgetown University Medical Center, 3900 Reservoir Road, NW, Washington, DC 20057, USA.

  • Article and publication are at http://www.rnajournal.org/cgi/doi/10.1261/rna.5510503.

    • Accepted May 7, 2003.
    • Received March 10, 2003.
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  1. doi: 10.1261/rna.5510503 RNA 9: 923-930 Copyright 2003 by RNA Society

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