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Updated: Aug 18, 2026

Simultaneous Mapping and Quantitation of Ribonucleotides in Human Mitochondrial DNA
Published on: November 14, 2017
Transfer RNA gene recruitment in mitochondrial DNA
Dennis V Lavrov1, B Franz Lang
1Program in Evolutionary Biology, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Centre Robert Cedergren, Département de Biochimie, Université de Montréal, 2900 Boulevard Edouard-Montpetit, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H3T 1J4. dlavrov@iastate.edu
Abstract:
Transfer RNA (tRNA) is the adaptor molecule that mediates recognition of the codon sequence in mRNA and enables its translation into the appropriate amino acid. Accordingly, phylogenetic relationships among tRNA genes are often thought to recapitulate the evolution of the genetic code. However, it has been demonstrated experimentally that one tRNA gene can be replaced with a copy of another carrying a single mutation in its anticodon sequence. In this article, we show that such "gene recruitment" has occurred recently and repeatedly in the mitochondrial genome of the demosponge Axinella corrugata and appears to be a common phenomenon in the evolution of the tRNA multigene family.
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