PMID:15469818

Citation	Xu, J, Hendrix, RW and Duda, RL (2004) Conserved translational frameshift in dsDNA bacteriophage tail assembly genes. Mol. Cell 16:11-21
Abstract	A programmed translational frameshift similar to frameshifts in retroviral gag-pol genes and bacterial insertion elements was found to be strongly conserved in tail assembly genes of dsDNA phages and to be independent of sequence similarities. In bacteriophage lambda, this frameshift controls production of two proteins with overlapping sequences, gpG and gpGT, that are required for tail assembly. We developed bioinformatic approaches to identify analogous -1 frameshifting sites and experimentally confirmed our predictions for five additional phages. Clear evidence was also found for an unusual but analogous -2 frameshift in phage Mu. Frameshifting sites could be identified for most phages with contractile or noncontractile tails whose length is controlled by a tape measure protein. Phages from a broad spectrum of hosts spanning Eubacteria and Archaea appear to conserve this frameshift as a fundamental component of their tail assembly mechanisms, supporting the idea that their tail genes share a common, distant ancestry.
Links	PubMed Online version:10.1016/j.molcel.2004.09.006
Keywords	Amino Acid Sequence; Bacteriophage mu/genetics; Bacteriophages/genetics; Base Sequence; Conserved Sequence; DNA Viruses/genetics; Evolution, Molecular; Frameshift Mutation; Molecular Sequence Data; Viral Proteins/genetics
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Significance

Gene product

Qualifier

GO Term

Evidence Code

with/from

Aspect

Extension

Notes

Status

NOT

GO:0051131: chaperone-mediated protein complex assembly

ECO:0000250:

UniProtKB:O64292 UniProtKB:P03734

P

The order of tail genes is highly conserved. The major tail protein gene is always upstream of the tape measure protein gene

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