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closenon-ATG initiation codons
Posted by guyreeves on 30 Mar 2007 at 09:57 GMT
I would like to congratulate you on your very interesting manuscript.
While I do not question any of your methods or analytical findings I am curious as to how your conclusion of selection for efficient translation initiation, can be reconciled with the common use of non ATG initiation codons in vertebrate mtDNA e.g. the common use of GTG in CO1 in many species?
As experimental evidence shows that the initiation codon is transcribed as Met regardless of whether or not a Met codon is specified (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.g...) it interesting to speculate, given your findings, why in some cases selection for elongation does not appear to select against the stable use of non-ATG codons.
I wondered if anybody had any insight into this matter ?
Thanks
Guy
Dr. Guy Reeves
Crisanti lab
Università degli Studi di Perugia
Dipartimento di Medicina Sperimentale e Scienze Biochimiche
Sezione Microbiologia
Via del Giochetto
06122
Perugia
Italy
RE: non-ATG initiation codons
xxia replied to guyreeves on 06 Oct 2010 at 21:08 GMT
Sorry for the late reply - I was not notified by PLoS One that there was a post.
I am not sure if non-AUG initiation codon is common in mitochondrial genomes. Early reports of non-AUG initiation codons in mtDNA were not substantiated by subsequent genomic sequencing.