Study on strategy for structure stabilization and evolution of tRNA in the view of split gene assembly

2013 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 24658074
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: Applied microbiology
• Research Institution: Toyohashi University of Technology
• Principal Investigator: TANAKA Terumichi 豊橋技術科学大学, 工学(系)研究科(研究院), 准教授 (30273337)
• Project Period (FY): 2012-04-01 – 2014-03-31
• Keywords: tRNA / split gene / evolution

Research Abstract

Transfer RNA is an important biomolecule containing common cloverleaf structure, the origin of which is an enigma. Our previous study showed tRNA is comprised of two independent hairpin RNAs to join one. The evidence remains as split genes in genome sequence. In this study, we searched and predicted possible split tRNA genes on the genomes, and obtained many candidates. The examination of the presence of split genes and detection of re-organization of the transcripts into one functional tRNA were performed. Some candidates were shown as the split genes, however, new evidence was not added in this study.