Antagonistic signals within the COX2 mRNA coding sequence control its translation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae mitochondria

Translational inhibition by a single COX2 codon is apparently due to an artifactual secondary structure created by the deletion mutation. (A) ARG8^m, COX2 codons 89–91, and deleted regions of cox2(1,15,89–91)::ARG8^m are diagrammed as in Figure 1. Three unique suppressors of this strain, which all fall within codon 15, are shown, as well as the resulting residue encoded. (B) One predicted mRNA structure for a portion of the fully prototrophic cox2(1–91)::ARG8^m allele is shown, as is a predicted structure for cox2(1,15, 89–91)::ARG8^m. Each initiation codon is shown in bold. Nucleotides mutated in the cox2(1,15,89–91)::ARG8^m suppressors are boxed, and the resulting nucleotides are shown to the right.