The regulatory TnaC nascent peptide preferentially inhibits release factor 2-mediated hydrolysis of peptidyl-tRNA.

The tnaC regulatory gene from the tna operon of Escherichia coli controls the transcription of its own operon through an attenuation mechanism relying on the accumulation of arrested ribosomes during inhibition of its own translation termination. This free l-Trp-dependent mechanism of inhibition of translation termination remains unclear. Here, we analyzed the inhibitory effects of l-Trp on the function of two known E. coli translation termination factors, RF1 and RF2. Using a series of reporter genes, we found that the in vivo l-Trp sensitivity of tnaC gene expression is influenced by the identity of its stop codon, with the UGA stop codon producing higher expression efficiency of the tnaA-lacZ gene construct than the UAG stop codon. In vitro TnaC-peptidyl-tRNA accumulation and toe-printing assays confirmed that in the presence of l-Trp, the UGA stop codon generates higher accumulation of both TnaC-peptidyl-tRNA and arrested ribosomes than does the UAG stop codon. RF-mediated hydrolysis assays corroborated that l-Trp blocks RF2 function more than that of RF1. Mutational analyses disclosed that amino acids substitutions at the 246 and 256 residue positions surrounding the RF2-GGQ functional motif reduce l-Trp-dependent expression of the tnaC(UGA) tnaA-lacZ construct and the ability of l-Trp to inhibit RF2-mediated cleavage of the TnaC-peptidyl-tRNA. Altogether, our results indicate that l-Trp preferentially blocks RF2 activity during translation termination of the tnaC gene. This inhibition depends on the identities of amino acid residues surrounding the RF2-GGQ functional motif.