2019•International Journal of Molecular SciencesOpen access

Aminoacyl-tRNA Synthetases and tRNAs for an Expanded Genetic Code: What Makes them Orthogonal?

Sergey Melnikov, Dieter Söll

Abstract

In the past two decades, tRNA molecules and their corresponding aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases (aaRS) have been extensively used in synthetic biology to genetically encode post-translationally modified and unnatural amino acids. In this review, we briefly examine one fundamental requirement for the successful application of tRNA/aaRS pairs for expanding the genetic code. This requirement is known as "orthogonality"-the ability of a tRNA and its corresponding aaRS to interact exclusively with each other and avoid cross-reactions with additional types of tRNAs and aaRSs in a given organism.

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Key concepts: Genetic code, Aminoacyl tRNA synthetase, Transfer RNA, Genetics, Code (set theory), Biology, Computational biology, Amino Acyl-tRNA Synthetases