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J. Bacteriol., Oct 1995, 5547-5553, Vol 177, No. 19
Copyright © 1995, American Society for Microbiology

Comparative characterization of release factor RF-3 genes of Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhimurium, and Dichelobacter nodosus

Y Kawazu, K Ito, K Matsumura and Y Nakamura
Department of Tumor Biology, University of Tokyo, Japan.

The termination of protein synthesis in bacteria requires two codon- specific release factors, RF-1 and RF-2. A gene for a third factor, RF- 3, that stimulates the RF-1 and RF-2 activities has been isolated from the gram-negative bacteria Escherichia coli and Dichelobacter nodosus. In this work, we isolated the RF-3 gene from Salmonella typhimurium and compared the three encoded RF-3 proteins by immunoblotting and intergeneric complementation and suppression. A murine polyclonal antibody against E. coli RF-3 reacted with both S. typhimurium and D. nodosus RF-3 proteins. The heterologous RF-3 genes complemented a null RF-3 mutation of E. coli regardless of having different sequence identities at the protein level. Additionally, multicopy expression of either of these RF-3 genes suppressed temperature-sensitive RF-2 mutations of E. coli and S. typhimurium by restoring adequate peptide chain release. These findings strongly suggest that the RF-3 proteins of these gram-negative bacteria share common structural and functional domains necessary for RF-3 activity and support the notion that RF-3 interacts functionally and/or physically with RF-2 during translation termination.

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