CSAIL Event Calendar: Previous Series

Evidence of abundant stop codon readthrough in Drosophila and other metazoa

Speaker: Irwin Jungreis , MIT
Date: April 6 2011
Time: 11:30AM to 1:00PM
Location: 32-G575
Host: Bonnie Berger, MIT

When encountering the stop codons of certain genes, ribosomes will insert a standard amino acid and continue translating, instead of stopping. While such stop codon readthrough occurs in many viral genomes, it has been observed for only a handful of eukaryotic genes. In 2007, Mike Lin found comparative genomics evidence that for 149 Drosophila genes the open reading frame following the stop codon is protein-coding, hinting that stop codon readthrough might be common in Drosophila. We have applied a wealth of bioinformatics techniques and genome-wide data sets to:
- Obtain further evidence of translation downstream of these stop codons.
- Rule out explanations other than readthrough.
- Find clues about the mechanism of readthrough.
- Find readthrough in other species and determine the phylogenic extent of abundant readthrough.

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