base-pairing versatility determines wobble sites in trna anticodons of vertebrate mitogenomes碱基配对多才多艺决定摆动网站在脊椎动物mitogenomes trna反密码子.pdfVIP

Base-Pairing Versatility Determines Wobble Sites in tRNA Anticodons of Vertebrate Mitogenomes Miguel M. Fonseca1,2*, Sara Rocha 1,2, David Posada1,2 1 CIBIO, Research Center in Biodiversity and Genetic Resources, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal, 2 Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Immunology, University of Vigo, Vigo, Spain Abstract Background: Vertebrate mitochondrial genomes typically have one transfer RNA (tRNA) for each synonymous codon family. This limited anticodon repertoire implies that each tRNA anticodon needs to wobble (establish a non-Watson-Crick base pairing between two nucleotides in RNA molecules) to recognize one or more synonymous codons. Different hypotheses have been proposed to explain the factors that determine the nucleotide composition of wobble sites in vertebrate mitochondrial tRNA anticodons. Until now, the two major postulates – the ‘‘codon-anticodon adaptation hypothesis’’ and the ‘‘wobble versatility hypothesis’’ – have not been formally tested in vertebrate mitochondria because both make the same predictions regarding the composition of anticodon wobble sites. The same is true for the more recent ‘‘wobble cost hypothesis’’. Principal Findings: In this study we have analyzed the occurrence of synonymous codons and tRNA anticodon wobble sites in 1553 complete vertebrate mitochondrial genomes, focusing on three fish species with mtDNA codon usage bias reversal (L-strand is GT-rich). These mitogenomes constitute an excellent opportunity to study the evolution of the wobble nucleotide composition of tRNA anticodons because due to the reversal the predictions for the anticodon wobble sites differ between the existing hypotheses. We observed that none of the wobble sites of tRNA anticodons in these unusual mitochondrial genomes coevolved to match the new overall codon usage bias