Email updates   Paper report  How aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase
recognizes tRNA  Rachel Brem  Citation and License  Genome
Biology 2000, 1:reports005  doi:10.1186/gb-2000-1-1-reports005
Received:2 November 1999 Published:17 March 2000  © 2000 BioMed
Central Ltd  Significance and context  In order for a cell's
protein synthetic machinery to obey mRNAs to the letter, it must
avoid plugging in the wrong amino acids to the nascent
polypeptide chain. Part of the error-checking responsibility
lies with aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases, enzymes that hook an amino
acid to an adenylate group and then join it to a tRNA. The tRNAs
for the different amino acids differ not only in their anticodon
- which binds a complementary nucleotide triplet on the mRNA
during protein synthesis - but also elsewhere in their
sequences. This paper asks how aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases
recognize the correct tRNA. Previous work showed that the
synthetase screens tRNAs mostly during the catalysis of the
amino acid-tRNA bond. Here, Bovee et al. ask wh