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.

Tinkering with decoding versatility (733) is no longer just Nature's prerogative. Despite flexibility of tRNAs with expanded anticodon loops (734, 735) , several advances including use of pyrrolysine tRNA, synthetase selection improvements (736) , mutants of ribosome decoding cavities (737), genome wide codon reassignment together with deletion of a release factor gene and potentially of subunit tethering (738) , are permitting effective use of quadruplet codons as one of the approaches for codon creation in efforts to greatly expand the repertoire of types of encoded amino acids for new synthetic capabilities with accompanying genetic biocontainment and virus resistance (438, 739) .