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


A. A. Bogdanov1* 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
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.
KEY WORDS: protein synthesis, transfer RNAs, aminoacyl-tRNA-synthetases, RNA-protein recognition, translation termination, polypeptide release factors, structural-functional analysis

DOI: 10.1134/S0006297906080141