Ribosome Evolution and Structural Capacitance

Ashley M Buckle; Malcolm Buckle

doi:10.3389/fmolb.2019.00123

Ribosome Evolution and Structural Capacitance

Front Mol Biosci. 2019 Nov 14:6:123. doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2019.00123. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Ashley M Buckle¹, Malcolm Buckle²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Biomedicine Discovery Institute, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia.
² LBPA, ENS Paris-Saclay, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, Cachan, France.

Abstract

In addition to the canonical loss-of-function mutations, mutations in proteins may additionally result in gain-of-function through the binary activation of cryptic "structural capacitance elements." Our previous bioinformatic analysis allowed us to propose a new mechanism of protein evolution - structural capacitance - that arises via the generation of new elements of microstructure upon mutations that cause a disorder-to-order (D→O) transition in previously disordered regions of proteins. Here we propose that the D→O transition is a necessary follow-on from expected early codon-anticodon and tRNA acceptor stem-amino acid usage, via the accumulation of structural capacitance elements - reservoirs of disorder in proteins. We develop this argument further to posit that structural capacitance is an inherent consequence of the evolution of the genetic code.

Keywords: codon-anticodon; disorder-order transition; genetic code; protein disordered region; ribosome evolution; structural capacitance.