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.

The 3 stimulator for S. cerevisiae Ty3 +1 frameshifting identified earlier is also thought to act without intra-mRNA pairing in the ribosome mRNA entrance channel. A functional model involving non-base pair interactions was considered (214, 215) . This 14-nt sequence has a 7.5-fold stimulatory effect on Ty3 frameshifting (214) . A conserved 3 stimulator with different sequence but similar effectiveness for EST3 +1 frameshifting has also been mutagenically characterized, and is almost twice as long (241) . While the EST3 and Ty3 3 stimulators can act on both the Ty1 and Ty3 shift sites, interestingly, both are ineffective with a stop codon instead of a slow-to-decode sense codon in the A-site (as in the S. cerevisiae antizyme site GCG UGA C) (241, 421) .