Regulation of individual tRNA genes, which enables the flexible tRNA repertoire in eukaryotic cells.

2019 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17K07289
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Molecular biology
• Research Institution: University of Hyogo
• Principal Investigator: Yoshihisa Tohru 兵庫県立大学, 生命理学研究科, 教授 (60212312)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: tRNA遺伝子 / 同義遺伝子 / tRNAレパートリー / 転写制御

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Recently, transcriptional regulation of tRNA, mostly encoded by multiple synonymous genes, has been gathering researchers' interest. In this study, we devised a new method to quantify absolute amount of tRNA, and analyzed tRNA repertoires of yeast cells under various physiological conditions. Next, we measured expression of individual genes encoding the same tRNA via analyzing gene-specific pre-tRNA amounts, and found that some of the synonymous tRNA genes are regulated individually. Finally, we constructed a complete set of deletion strains with various gene numbers of tRNA-Trp. This set enabled us to show that each of the genes contributes almost equally to production of tRNA-Trp, and that no compensatory regulation occurs to increase expression of tRNA-Trp per gene when the gene number of tRNA-Trp is reduced.

Free Research Field

分子生物学・細胞生物学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究は今まで知られていなかった個別tRNA遺伝子の発現制御を解析するための研究基盤の構築を行った。学術的には、生理条件に応じた個別のtRNA遺伝子の発現制御が酵母の様な単純な生物でも見られたことから、広く生物間で保存された新規なtRNAの転写機構の発見につながると期待される。他方本研究では、今まで正確な測定が難しかったtRNAの新規絶対定量法を確立した。tRNA組成の変化は様々な疾患でも見られることから、医療面等での応用につながることが期待される。