Role of Amino-acyl tRNA synthetases in the regulation of translation of mRNAs encoding for enzymes in amino acid biosynthesis pathways
Amino-acyl tRNA synthetases are enzymes that catalyse the aminoacylation reaction, where an amino acid is covalently linked to its cognate tRNA. Besides this canonical function of tRNA aminoacylation, aaRSs have a role in several metabolic and signalling pathways. A role in post-transcriptional regulation is known through binding to mRNA. Recent RIP-seq results from our lab revealed mRNA repertoire bound by many yeast aaRS. Interestingly many mRNAs encoding proteins involved in amino acid biosynthesis and ribosome biogenesis were detected. This implies that aaRS might induce regulation on these biological functions via the mRNA binding. The role of aaRS in amino acid biosynthesis and the mechanism of this regulation is explored in this project. To achieve this, we perform amino acid starvation experiments to study how starvation causes alteration in the expression of the mRNAs and their binding to aaRS. Further, we study whether this alteration is due to a translation regulatory impact of the bound aaRS. Most importantly, as the mRNAs bound by aaRS show
enrichment of tRNA anticodon-like structures, we are also checking the impact of tRNA overexpression on the binding of mRNAs. This work uncovers new mechanisms of translation control by aaRSs, and the role of tRNA-like sequences in this process.
