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Resurrection of Ancestral Aspartyl‐tRNA Synthetases
Author(s) -
McDaniels Arianna,
Sheppard Kelly
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.2020.34.s1.05800
Subject(s) - transfer rna , biology , aminoacyl trna synthetase , computational biology , genetics , evolutionary biology , rna , gene
Protein synthesis is essential for life and requires the correct pairing of amino acids to their cognate transfer tRNA by aminoacyl‐tRNA synthetases. Many prokaryotes lack an AsnRS to directly attach Asn to tRNA Asn . Instead these organisms use a non‐discriminating AspRS to attach Asp to tRNAAsn and GatCAB to amidate the Asp to Asn. Organisms with an AsnRS often have a discriminating AspRS (D‐AspRS) that only attach Asp to tRNA Asp . How that specificity evolved from a bacterial ND‐AspRS is unknown. To address, we phylogenetically modeled the last common ancestor of D‐AspRS of gamma‐proteobacteria and its most closely related ancestral gamma‐proteobacterial ND‐AspRS. We report on the overproduction and purification of the ancestral enzymes to study how specificity evolved. The work will provide insight into the evolution of tRNA specificity and tools for synthetic biology. Support or Funding Information National Science Foundation (MCB‐1615770)