This cooking movie was taken for the "RNA Day" Aug 1st (AUG is the start codon of a messenger RNA translated by a ribosome). On this frying pan, A (orange) U (purple) and G (cyan) form a base triple, which is composed of the first and second major non-Watson-Crick base pairs; the wobble GoU and the sheared GoA pairs.
The GoU (cyan-purple) base pair is very stable as the Watson-Crick G=C (cyan-green) and A-U (orange-purple) base pairs on small wooden plates. The wobble base pair is well-known as the third base pair between the mRNA codon and the tRNA anticodon, which is initially proposed by Francis Crick in 1966 (Crick, 1966, J. Mol. Biol.) and confirmed afterwards in the catalytic site (the decoding A site) of the ribosome by the Ramakrishnan group in 2001 (Ogle et al., 2001, Science). The pair is often found also in stem regions of structured RNA molecules.
The sheared GoA (cyan-orange) is a key base pair of RNA structures and functions. For example, the base pair also called as trans Sugar-edge/Hoogsteen GoA base pair is found in several RNA structural/functional motifs, such as Kink-turn, bulged-G (sarcin-ricin loop), GNRA tetraloop, tetraloop receptor, three-way junction and hook-turn motifs. These motifs are generally observed in ribozymes, riboswitches and ribosomes.
References:
- Crick FHC. Codon-anticodon pairing: The wobble hypothesis. J. Mol. Biol., 19, 548-555 (1966).
- Ogle JM, Brodersen DE, Clemons WM Jr, Tarry MJ, Carter AP, Ramakrishnan V. Recognition of cognate transfer RNA by the 30S ribosomal subunit. Science, 292, 897-902 (2001).
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