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.

These studies have revealed a hyper-rotated ribosomal state that has widespread implications, and have vastly improved knowledge of the elongation pausing compared to non-frameshifted ribosomes. In one of the studies the overall pause was determined to be 10-fold longer (403) and in another EF-G was found to dissociate >15 times more slowly than from a sequence lacking a frameshift consensus sequence (450) . The stimulatory role of the ribosomal RNA of the translating ribosome pairing with the internal Shine Dalgargo sequence 10 nts 5 of the shift site has been clarified and found to cause large scale back and forth movements of the ribosome ≥1 codon on average specifically around the shift site region (392, 403, 518) . These stochastic translocation attempts are not seen in its absence, i.e. the 3 stem loop or the shift sequence alone does not cause such fluctuation.