The Highly Conserved Codon following the Slippery Sequence Supports -1 Frameshift Efficiency at the HIV-1 Frameshift Site

Mathew, Suneeth F.; Crowe-McAuliffe, Caillan; Graves, Ryan; Cardno, Tony S.; McKinney, Cushla; Poole, Elizabeth S.; Tate, Warren P.

The ability of the ribosome to maintain reading frame fidelity during protein synthesis is fundamental. The tightly controlled mechanisms that maintain fidelity can, however, be superseded by programmed events, one of which is programmed ribosomal frameshifting (PRF) [1] . PRF involves tRNA slippage either 5´(−1) or 3´(+1) relative to the mRNA followed by continued translation in the new reading frame. PRF has mostly been studied in the context of eukaryotic viruses, and, more rarely, in bacteria, yeast and higher eukaryotes [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] . However, there is growing recognition of PRF as a regulatory mechanism used by both prokaryotes and eukaryotes ( [9] [10] [11] and references therein). In the HIV-1 mRNA, −1 PRF results in translation of enzymatic domains and determines a specific ratio of enzymes to structural proteins critical for virus infectivity [12] , [13] .