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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2023 Sep 1.
Published in final edited form as: Wiley Interdiscip Rev RNA. 2022 Feb 14;13(5):e1717. doi: 10.1002/wrna.1717

Figure 1: tRNA splicing pathway. A cartoon of the tRNA splicing pathway.

Figure 1:

An intron-containing pre-tRNA is labelled showing the exons (teal) and intron (red). The endonuclease TSEN2 (orange) cuts at the 5′ splice site junction with the intron while the endonuclease TSEN34 (pink) cuts the 3′ exon/intron junction. The cleavage is conducted by the TSEN complex TSEN54 (green), TSEN2 (orange), TSEN34 (pink), TSEN15 (blue), resulting in an excised intron (red) and the exons (teal). The newly cleaved ends are a 5′-exon containing a 2′3′-cyclic phosphate, the 3′-exon containing a 5′-hydroxyl and the excised intron containing 5′-hydroxyl and 2′3′-cyclic phosphate ends. Finally, ligation proceeds the cleavage. In metazoans, the tRNA Ligase RTCB is the ligase while in yeast, Trl1 performs the ligation. Both ligation pathways lead to mature tRNA and linear and circular intron products. This figure was created with BioRender.com.