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Explain The Two-Step Aminoacylation Reaction Between Aars And Aars

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The two-step aminoacylation reaction that is required to attach an amino acid to the tRNA is displayed in Figure 6.
Figure 6: Word equation for the 2-step aminoacylation reaction within aaRS’s. Please note that aa (amino acid), aaRS (aminoacyl tRNA synthetase), and aaRS.aa-AMP (amino acyl adenalate) are the abbreviations within the word equation. Adapted from Ibba, M 2000:

Within the first step of the reaction, the binding of the ATP to the enzyme induces a conformational change, allowing the specific amino acid to bind to the aaRS, thus forming the active amino acid AMP complex (aaRS.aa-AMP). The amino acid binds to the aaRS such that the carboxy terminus of the amino acid is bound to the tRNA in step 2, and a O=C-O bond is formed between the OH group of the 3’ end of the tRNA and the amino acid. The DHU loop and the anticodon nucleotides are important structural features that determine the specificity between the amino acid and tRNA. A covalent bond is formed …show more content…

To prevent incorrect amino acid joining to a tRNA, an editing domain is required. The 3.90.740.10 (connecting-peptide domain) is a post-transfer editing and proofreading domain, which hydrolyses the misacylated tRNA, and is found in ValRS, IleRS and LeuRS. For example, isoleucine is larger than valine by just one methyl group, therefore these aaRS’s need to distinguish between the smaller amino acids to ensure the correct amino acid is transferred to the tRNA. The 3.90.740.10 domain is inserted into the catalytic core and if valine enters the editing domain, it will be hydrolysed and broken down, as is too small to accommodate the binding of isoleucine (Arnez. J, 2009). 1.10.730.10 (Orthogonal bundle) is another example of an editing domain, and helps with the binding of the correct bases to the anticodon (Sugiura et al.

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