A Strong Promoter
Provided with the Gene Encoding Arginyl-tRNA Synthetase(argS) from Escherichia
coli
LIU Mo-Fang1, LI Tong1, YIN Zhao-Bao2,
XU Min-Gang1, WANG En-Duo1*, WANG Yin-Lai1
( 1State Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Shanghai Institute
of Biochemistry, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200031,
China£» 2Institute of Geriatrics Medicine,
Shanghai University of T.C.M., Shanghai 200032, China )
Abstract Previous
studies showed that the gene argS encoding the arginyl-tRNA
synthetase(ArgRS) from Escherichia coli(E.coli), was
overexpressed 1 000 folds in the E.coli transformant TG1/pUC-argS,
while the gene leuS, encoding the leucyl-tRNA synthetase(LeuRS) from E.coli,
was only overproduced 35-fold in the same case. To investigate why the
expression of these two aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase genes is so different, a
fused gene (termed parg-leuS) was constructed by replacement of the
5'flanking region of leuS to 5' flanking region of argS. In
the E.coli transformant TG1/pUC-parg-leuS, the activity of
LeuRS was only improved 8.5-fold, which was much lower than that of the
transformant harboring the recombinant plasmid pUC18-leuS or pKK-leuS.
However, by RNA dot hybridization the amount of mRNA produced in the
transcription of parg-leuS was about 5 times than that of the wild
type leuS, and was similar to that of pKK-leuS, suggesting
that the promoter of argS is very strong. Analysis of the secondary
structure around the initiation codon among three mRNAs showed that the
secondary structure of the mRNA from parg-leuS was the strongest of
the three mRNAs. From the results, it could be deduced that expression of the
fused gene parg-leuS might be controlled at the translational level
and the strong secondary structure of this mRNA may hinder translation
initiation and result in a low translation efficiency.
Key words arginyl-tRNA synthetase£»gene expression£»leucyl-tRNA synthetase£»strong promoter
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