RNA-Protein Interactions at the Initial and Terminal Stages of Protein Biosynthesis as Investigated by Lev Kisselev (On the Occasion of His 70th Anniversary)

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A. A. Bogdanov^1* and V. L. Karpov²

¹Lomonosov Moscow State University, 119992 Moscow, Russia; fax: (495) 932-8846; E-mail: bogdanov@belozersky.msu.ru

²Engelhardt Institute of Molecular Biology, Russian Academy of Sciences, ul. Vavilova 32, 119991 Moscow, Russia

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

Received April 3, 2006

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This review highlights studies by Lev L. Kisselev and his colleagues on the initial and terminal stages of protein biosynthesis, which cover the period of the last 45 years (1961-2006). They investigated spatial structure of tRNAs, structure and functions of aminoacyl-tRNA-synthetases of higher organisms, and the final step of protein synthesis, termination of translation. L. Kisselev and his team have made three major contributions to these fields of molecular biology; (i) they proposed the hypothesis on the role of anticodon triplet of tRNA in recognition by cognate aminoacyl-tRNA synthetase, which has been experimentally confirmed and is now included in textbooks; (ii) identified primary structures and functions of two eukaryotic protein factors (eRF1 and eRF3) playing a pivotal role in translation termination; (iii) characterized a structural basis for stop codon recognition by eRF1 within the ribosome and discovered the negative structural elements of eRF1, limiting its recognition of one or two stop-codons.

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KEY WORDS: protein synthesis, transfer RNAs, aminoacyl-tRNA-synthetases, RNA-protein recognition, translation termination, polypeptide release factors, structural-functional analysis

DOI: 10.1134/S0006297906080141

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