J Biol Chem, Vol. 275, Issue 2, 1030-1034, January 14, 2000
Purification and Characterization of the tRNA-processing Enzyme
RNase BN*
Colleen
Callahan
,
Doris
Neri-Cortes§¶, and
Murray P.
Deutscher
From the
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular
Biology, University of Miami School of Medicine, Miami, Florida
33101-6129 and the § Department of Biochemistry, University
of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, Connecticut 06032
RNase BN, a tRNA-processing enzyme previously
shown to be required for the 3'-maturation of certain bacteriophage
T4-encoded tRNAs, was overexpressed and purified to near homogeneity
from Escherichia coli. The purified enzyme, which is free
of nucleic acid, is an
2-dimer with a molecular mass of
~65 kDa. RNase BN displays a number of unusual catalytic properties
compared with the other exoribonucleases of E. coli. The
enzyme is most active at pH 6.5 in the presence of Co2+ and
high concentrations of monovalent salts. It is highly specific for tRNA
substrates containing an incorrect residue within the universal 3'-CCA
sequence. Thus, tRNA-CU and tRNA-CA are effective substrates, whereas
intact tRNA-CCA, elongated tRNA-CCA-Cn, phosphodiesterase-treated tRNA,
and the closely related tRNA-CC are essentially inactive as substrates.
RNA or DNA oligonucleotides also are not substrates. These data
indicate that RNase BN has an extremely narrow substrate specificity.
However, since tRNA molecules with incorrect residues within the -CCA
sequence are not normally produced in E. coli, the role of
RNase BN in uninfected cells remains to be determined.
*
This work was supported by Grant GM16317 from the National
Institutes of Health.The costs of publication of this
article were defrayed in part by the
payment of page charges. The article
must therefore be hereby marked
"advertisement" in
accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section
1734 solely to indicate this fact.