Measurements of translation initiation from all 64 codons in E. coli

Published

February 21, 2017

Author(s)

Ariel H. Hecht, Jeff E. Glasgow, Paul Jaschke, Lukmaan Bawazer, Matthew S. Munson, Jennifer R. Cochran, Drew Endy, Marc L. Salit

Abstract

Our understanding of translation represents a cornerstone of molecular biology and underpins our capacity to engineer living matter. For decades, the codon AUG and a few near-cognates (GUG, UUG) have been exclusively considered as “start codons” for translation in Escherichia coli. The remaining 61 codons, outside of a few very rare exceptions, are not thought to initiate translation. Here we present the first systematic exploration of the capacity of all codons to initiate translation in E. coli. We examined the potential of all 64 codons to initiate translation of superfolder GFP (sfGFP) from a high-copy vector, and of 12 codons to initiate translation of sfGFP from a low- copy vector or NanoLuc luciferase from low- and single-copy vectors. We detected protein synthesis above background from 46 codons for sfGFP, and from all 12 codons for NanoLuc. Translation from these non-canonical codons ranged from 0.01% to 2% of translation initiated by AUG.

Citation

Nucleic Acids Research

Volume

45

Issue

7

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkx070

Citation

Hecht, A. , Glasgow, J. , Jaschke, P. , Bawazer, L. , Munson, M. , Cochran, J. , Endy, D. and Salit, M. (2017), Measurements of translation initiation from all 64 codons in E. coli, Nucleic Acids Research, [online], https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkx070 (Accessed October 13, 2025)