Kl. Heilman et al., INTERNAL 6-METHYLADENINE RESIDUES INCREASE THE IN-VITRO TRANSLATION EFFICIENCY OF DIHYDROFOLATE-REDUCTASE MESSENGER-RNA, International journal of biochemistry & cell biology, 28(7), 1996, pp. 823-829
N-6-Methyladenosine (m6A) is found internally in a number of mRNA mole
cules from higher eucaryotic cells. In these investigations, it was fo
und that the presence of m6A residues increase the in vitro translatio
n efficiency of capped T7 transcripts of mouse dihydrofolate reductase
(DHFR) mRNA. Using an in vitro rabbit reticulocyte translation system
, the formation of internal m6A residues in the DHFR transcripts resul
ted in a 1.5-fold increase in translated DHFR compared to transcripts
void of internal m6A residues. Translation in a wheat germ system, how
ever, resulted in no increase in translation efficiency upon m6A forma
tion, suggesting that the mechanism may be species-specific. Copyright
(C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.