Anionic G•U pairs in bacterial ribosomal rRNAs
- 1 University of Strasbourg, IBMC-CNRS;
- 2 Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.;
- 3 Bowling Green State University;
- 4 University of California, Berkeley
- ↵* Corresponding author; email: e.westhof{at}ibmc-cnrs.unistra.fr
Abstract
Wobble GU pairs (or G•U) occur frequently within double-stranded RNA helices interspersed between standard G=C and A-U Watson-Crick pairs. Another type of G•U pair interacting via their Watson-Crick edges has been observed in the A site of ribosome structures between a modified U34 in the tRNA anticodon triplet and G+3 in the mRNA. In such pairs the electronic structure of the U is changed with a negative charge on N3(U), resulting in two H-bonds between N1(G)…O4(U) and N2(G)…N3(U). Here, we report that such pairs occur in other highly conserved positions in ribosomal RNAs of bacteria in the absence of U modification. An anionic cis Watson-Crick G•G pair is also observed and well conserved in the small subunit. These pairs are observed in tightly folded regions.
Keywords
- Received January 8, 2023.
- Accepted April 5, 2023.
- Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press for the RNA Society
This article, published in RNA, is available under a Creative Commons License (Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International), as described at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.
