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 ICE introduced above that converts nonsymbiotic rhizobia into nitrogen fixing symbionts of leguminous plants utilizes +1 frameshifting in its expression. The 4th codon 5 of the shift site UUU is a conserved tryptophan codon and it is flanked on its 3 side by a glycine codon for which only the identity of the first 2 nts is conserved. Reasonably, it has been suggested that the encoded WG may influence the frameshifting (202) . Though not noted earlier for the likely bypassing in decoding the terminase gene of Streptomyces phage Hau3 and Streptomyces prophage Strep C.1 (161) , the codons 5 adjacent to the key UUA codon specify KGWG, i.e. in this case glycines flank the tryptophan codon, and nascent peptide influence on the bypassing is likely.