Bacterial translation machinery for deliberate mistranslation of the genetic code

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Significance Aminoacyl-transfer RNA (tRNA) synthetases (aaRSs) are essential enzymes that mediate accurate expression of the genetic code. More than 96% of analyzed species possess duplicated aaRSs genes, which are presumed to encode canonical aaRSs. However, in this study, we show that some of these seemingly canonical aaRSs are in fact repurposed for deliberate mistranslation of the genetic code, enabling organisms to encode two amino acids using a single sense codon. This finding, along with the abundance of duplicated aaRSs genes, suggests that the deliberate mistranslation of sense codons may be more common than previously thought. More broadly, our work illustrates that extant genomes have many exciting functionalities that are currently hidden under a disguise of canonical tRNA synthetases and tRNAs.