, 1996) CT99021 in the presence and absence of IF1 overexpression. Overexpression of IF1 did not enhance the level of CAT protein synthesis by wild-type ribosomes (Table 1). To test whether the effects of increased IF1 as a multicopy suppressor were specific to U791 ribosomes, DH5α cells expressing pRNA122 ribosomes bearing a nucleotide substitution (A516 or G770) were transformed
with pKAN6 or pKAN6-IF1, and the resulting transformants were tested for their degree of resistance to chloramphenicol. These mutations were chosen because they have been shown to exhibit a protein synthesis ability as poor as that of pRNA122-U791 ribosomes (Lee et al., 2001; Kim et al., 2007). IF1 overexpression had no effect CP-690550 clinical trial on mutant ribosomes bearing a nonfunctional mutation in other regions of 16S rRNA, thus indicating that the effect of IF1 on ribosome function is not a general phenomenon (Table 1). A previous study demonstrated that pRNA122-U791
ribosomes have ribosomal subunit association defects (Song et al., 2007). For this reason, we measured the effects of IF1 overexpression on pRNA122-U791 ribosomes in terms of the formation of 70S ribosomes. Total ribosomes were purified from cells that expressed pRNA122-U791 ribosomes in the presence and absence of IF1 overexpression using a sucrose gradient, and we analyzed the ability of pRNA122-U791 ribosomes to form 70S ribosomes. Primer extension analysis revealed that 16S rRNA containing U791 was notably under-represented in the 70S ribosome peaks (∼19%) of the total ribosomes purified from cells harboring pRNA122-U791 and pKAN6A, as has been shown previously (Song et al., 2007), while the distribution of 16S rRNA containing U791 was increased up to ∼25% in the 70S ribosome peaks purified from cells harboring pRNA122-U791 and pKAN6-IF1 (Fig. 2a). To test whether the effect of IF1 overexpression on
the formation of 70S ribosomes is specific to Thiamine-diphosphate kinase pRNA122-U791 ribosomes, we measured the effects of IF1 overexpression on wild-type and U770 mutant 30S ribosomes in terms of their ability to form 70S ribosomes. To do this, we subcloned a C to T mutation at position 1192 in the 16S rRNA coding region of pRNA122, pRNA122-U791, and pRNA122-U770. This mutation (U1192) has been shown to have no effect on ribosome function and has therefore been used to assess the distribution of plasmid-derived ribosomes in the cell (Sigmund et al., 1984; Makosky & Dahlberg, 1987). Total ribosomes were purified and analyzed using primer extension analysis. IF1 overexpression had no significant effect on pRNA122 wild-type and pRNA122-U770 ribosomes, while we found that the subunit association increased only by pRNA122-U791U1192 ribosomes, suggesting that the IF1 effect is specific to pRNA122-U791 ribosomes (Fig. 2b).