Evolutionary tradeoff between increase and decrease in translation fidelity

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 18K19309
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Research (Exploratory)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Medium-sized Section 43:Biology at molecular to cellular levels, and related fields
• Research Institution: Waseda University
• Principal Investigator: Daisuke Kiga 早稲田大学, 理工学術院, 教授 (30376587)
• Project Period (FY): 2018-06-29 – 2022-03-31
• Keywords: 合成生物学 / 遺伝暗号 / タンパク質進化

Outline of Final Research Achievements

In this study, we engineered in vitro genetic code to decrease accuracy of codon-amino acid correspondence. Using the engineered code, our in silico evolution showed the following points. Although the code produce molecules with weak activity due to amino acid replacements, the code can circumvent a risk to be trapped at local optima in evolution.

Free Research Field

合成生物学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

直感的に感じられる、遺伝子発現ステップのうちのタンパク質合成におけるエラーは生物にとっての負の側面しかない、という視点が誤りである、ということを示した学術的意義は大きい。社会的意義としても、いろいろ試した際に間違いが次のチャレンジの向上につながる、という視点は興味深い。