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. 1973 Aug;70(8):2193–2195. doi: 10.1073/pnas.70.8.2193

Conformation of Charged and Uncharged tRNAPhe

Yeng P Wong *, Brian R Reid †, David R Kearns *
PMCID: PMC433699  PMID: 4599618

Abstract

The effect of aminoacylation on the conformation of yeast tRNAPhe was investigated by high-resolution (300 MHz) proton nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Resonances in the low-field (-11 to -15 ppm) region of the spectra are due to ring NH protons of Watson-Crick base pairs, and to a very high degree of approximation (within 0.05 ppm) the low-field spectra of tRNAPhe and phenylalanyl-tRNAPhe are identical. From this observation and analysis of the low-field NMR spectra we conclude that the secondary structures of the two tRNAs are identical with respect to base-pairing schemes and interbase distances in the helical region (0.1-0.2 Å). Several tertiary structural features, including conformation of the dihydro-U loop, conformation of the minor loop, relative orientations of the acceptor and the TΨC stems, dihydro-U and anticodon stems, and probably conformation of the anticodon loop are shown to be the same in tRNAPhe and phenylalanyl-tRNAPhe. Our results leave little remaining opportunity for changes in tertiary structure that would not have been observed by the NMR method.

Keywords: base-pairing, 300 MHz proton nuclear magnetic resonance

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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