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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2016 Sep 21.
Published in final edited form as: Nat Methods. 2016 Mar 21;13(5):453–458. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.3807

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Design of ligand-responsive −1 PRF switches. (a) Translation control scheme. The protein output of an mRNA is dictated by the translation reading frame. −1 PRF switches direct the ribosome’s translation reading frame depending on the presence or absence of a ligand. (b) Methodological approach to build −1 PRF switches. Active frameshift stimulatory elements are discovered from large RNA libraries using a functional in vitro selection. Frameshift stimulatory elements (purple) are then coupled to RNA aptamer modules (gold) by rational design to create frameshift switches. Lastly, frameshift switch devices are optimized by in vivo directed evolution using a frameshift-dependent growth selection.