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Rewiring translation – Genetic code expansion and its applications
Author(s) -
Neumann Heinz
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
febs letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.593
H-Index - 257
eISSN - 1873-3468
pISSN - 0014-5793
DOI - 10.1016/j.febslet.2012.02.002
Subject(s) - genetic code , ribosome , transfer rna , computational biology , synthetic biology , aminoacyl trna synthetase , biology , translation (biology) , stop codon , protein biosynthesis , bioorthogonal chemistry , amino acid , genome , genetics , gene , chemistry , rna , combinatorial chemistry , messenger rna , click chemistry
With few minor variations, the genetic code is universal to all forms of life on our planet. It is difficult to imagine that one day organisms might exist that use an entirely different code to translate the information of their genome. Recent developments in the field of synthetic biology, however, have opened the gate to their creation. The genetic code of several organisms has been expanded by the heterologous expression of evolved aminoacyl‐tRNA synthetase/tRNA CUA pairs that mediate the incorporation of unnatural amino acids in response to amber codons. These UAAs introduce exciting new features into proteins, such as spectroscopic probes, UV‐inducible crosslinkers, and functional groups for bioorthogonal conjugations or posttranslational modifications. Orthogonal ribosomes provide a parallel translational machinery in Escherichia coli that has lost its evolutionary constraints. Evolved variants of these ribosomes translate amber or quadruplet codons with massively enhanced efficiency. Here, I review these recent developments emphasizing their tremendous potential to facilitate biochemical and cell biological studies.