J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 260, Issue 29, 15571-15576, Dec, 1985
Cytoplasmic methionyl-tRNA synthetase from Bakers' yeast. A monomer with a post-translationally modified N terminus
F Fasiolo, BW Gibson, P Walter, B Chatton, K Biemann and Y Boulanger
Methionyl-tRNA synthetase has been purified from a yeast strain carrying
the MES1 structural gene on a high copy number plasmid (pFL1). The purified
enzyme is a monomer of Mr = 85,000 in contrast to its counterpart from
Escherichia coli which is a dimer made up of identical subunits (Mr =
76,000; Dardel, F., Fayat, G., and Blanquet, S. (1984) J. Bacteriol. 160,
1115-1122). The yeast enzyme was not amenable to Edman's degradation
indicating a blocked NH2 terminus. Its primary structure as derived from
the DNA sequence (Walter, P., Gangloff, J., Bonnet, J., Boulanger, Y.,
Ebel, J.P., and Fasiolo, F. (1983) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 80,
2437-2441) has been confirmed using the fast atom bombardment-mass
spectrometric method. This method was applied to tryptic digests of the
carboxymethylated enzyme and the corresponding data provided extensive
coverage of the translated DNA sequence, thus confirming its correctness.
The ambiguity concerning which of the three NH2-terminally located
methionine codons is the initiation codon was easily resolved from peptides
identified in this region. It was possible to show that the first
methionine had been removed and that the new NH2 terminus, serine, had been
acetylated. A comparison between the yeast and E. coli sequences shows that
the former has an N-terminal extension of about 200 residues as compared to
the latter. It also lacks the C-terminal domain which is responsible for
the dimerization of the E. coli methionyl-tRNA synthetase.