Measurement of Specific Mycobacterial Mistranslation Rates with Gain-of-function Reporter Systems

The translation of genes into proteins is prone to errors. Although the average rate of translational error in model systems is estimated to be 1/10,000 per codon, the actual error rates vary widely, depending on the species, environment, and codons being studied. We have previously shown that mycobacteria use a two-step pathway for the generation of aminoacylated glutamine and asparagine tRNAs and that this is specifically associated with relatively high error rates due to the modulation of mistranslation rates by an essential component of the pathway, the amidotransferase GatCAB. We modified a previously employed Renilla-Firefly dual-luciferase system that had been used to measure mistranslation rates in Escherichia coli for use in mycobacteria to measure specific mistranslation rates of glutamate at glutamine codons and aspartate for asparagine codons. Although this reporter system was suitable for the accurate estimation of specific error rates, lack of sensitivity and requirements for excessive manipulation steps made it unsuitable for high-throughput applications. Therefore, we developed a second gain-of-function reporter system, using Nluc luciferase and green fluorescent protein (GFP), which is more amenable to medium/high-throughput settings. We used this system to identify kasugamycin as a small molecule that can decrease mycobacterial mistranslation. Although the reporters that we describe here have been used to measure specific types of mycobacterial mistranslation, they may be modified to measure other types of mistranslation in a number of model systems.