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Updated: Aug 10, 2026

The Multifaceted Benefits of Protein Co-expression in Escherichia coli
Published on: February 5, 2015
A dynamic competition between release factor 2 and the tRNA(Sec) decoding UGA at the recoding site of Escherichia
J B Mansell1, D Guévremont, E S Poole
1Department of Biochemistry and Centre for Gene Research, University of Otago, PO Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Abstract:
Factors affecting competition between termination and elongation in vivo during translation of the fdhF selenocysteine recoding site (UGA) were studied with wild-type and modified fdhF sequences. Altering sequences surrounding the recoding site UGA without affecting RNA secondary structure indicated that the kinetics of stop signal decoding have a significant influence on selenocysteine incorporation efficiency. The UGA in the wild-type fdhF sequence remains 'visible' to the factor and forms a site-directed cross-link when mRNA stem-loop secondary structure is absent, but not when it is present. The timing of the secondary structure unfolding during translation may be a critical feature of competition between release factor 2 and tRNA(Sec) for decoding UGA. Increasing the cellular concentration of either of these decoding molecules for termination or selenocysteine incorporation showed that they were able to compete for UGA by a kinetic competition that is dynamic and dependent on the Escherichia coli growth rate. The tRNA(Sec)-mediated decoding can compete more effectively for the UGA recoding site at lower growth rates, consistent with anaerobic induction of fdhF expression.
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