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Journal of Bacteriology, March 2007, p. 1954-1962, Vol. 189, No. 5
0021-9193/07/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.01203-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Loss of a Universal tRNA Feature{triangledown}

Chunxia Wang, Bruno W. Sobral, and Kelly P. Williams*

Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia 24061

Received 2 August 2006/ Accepted 5 December 2006

tRNAHis has thus far always been found with one of the most distinctive of tRNA features, an extra 5' nucleotide that is usually a guanylate. tRNAHis genes in a disjoint alphaproteobacterial group comprising the Rhizobiales, Rhodobacterales, Caulobacterales, Parvularculales, and Pelagibacter generally fail to encode this extra guanylate, unlike those of other alphaproteobacteria and bacteria in general. Rather than adding an extra 5' guanylate posttranscriptionally as eukaryotes do, evidence is presented here that two of these species, Sinorhizobium meliloti and Caulobacter crescentus, simply lack any extra nucleotide on tRNAHis. This loss correlates with changes at the 3' end sequence of tRNAHis and at many sites in histidyl-tRNA synthetase that might be expected to affect tRNAHis recognition, in the flipping loop, the insertion domain, the anticodon-binding domain, and the motif 2 loop. The altered tRNA charging system may have affected other tRNA charging systems in these bacteria; for example, a site in tRNAGlu sequences was found to covary with tRNAHis among alphaproteobacteria.

* Corresponding author. Mailing address: Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg VA 24061. Phone: (540) 231-7121. Fax: (540) 231-2606. E-mail: kellwill{at}vt.edu.

{triangledown} Published ahead of print on 15 December 2006.

Journal of Bacteriology, March 2007, p. 1954-1962, Vol. 189, No. 5
0021-9193/07/$08.00+0     doi:10.1128/JB.01203-06
Copyright © 2007, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.



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