Synonymous codon substitutions affect ribosome traffic and protein folding during in vitro translation

Anton A Komar, Thierry Lesnik, Claude Reiss
1999 FEBS Letters  
To investigate the possible influence of the local rates of translation on protein folding, 16 consecutive rare (in Escherichia coli) codons in the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) gene have been replaced by frequent ones. Site-directed silent mutagenesis reduced the pauses in translation of CAT in E. coli S30 extract cell-free system and led to the acceleration of the overall rate of CAT protein synthesis. At the same time, the silently mutated protein (with unaltered protein sequence)
more » ... ynthesized in the E. coli S30 extract system was shown to possess 20% lower specific activity. The data suggest that kinetics of protein translation can affect the in vivo proteinfolding pathway, leading to increased levels of protein misfolding. z 1999 Federation of European Biochemical Societies.
doi:10.1016/s0014-5793(99)01566-5 pmid:10622731 fatcat:fjbinzarzndibggviaxxxtyfki