Ribosomal frameshifting and transcriptional slippage: From genetic steganography and cryptography to adventitious use

Atkins, John F.; Loughran, Gary; Bhatt, Pramod R.; Firth, Andrew E.; Baranov, Pavel V.

RF2 frameshifting involves the anticodon of peptidyl-tRNA dissociating from its codon pairing and following realignment, re-pairing to mRNA at the overlapping +1 frame codon with the involvement of first codon position wobble pairing. Successive errors have been shown to follow from near-cognate P-site pairing, and binding of RF2 to mismatched complexes aided by RF3 leads to termination in what has been termed post peptidyl transfer quality control (356) . As frameshifting is elevated when the RF2 level is low, it will be of interest to ascertain whether there is heterogeneity of the amino acid sequence encoded by the codons directly following the shift site (the 'special' conformation of the ribosomes due to the signals involved may preclude it). Bacterial release factor 1 does not play the role that release factor 2 does in quality control (357) .