Structure of a purine-purine wobble base pair in the decoding center of the ribosome

Here we report the crystal structures of I·C and I·A wobble base pairs in the context of the ribosomal decoding center, clearly showing that the I·A base pair is of an Ianti·Aanti conformation, as predicted by Crick. Additionally, the structures enable the observation of changes in the anticodon to allow purine-purine base pairing, the 'widest' base pair geometry allowed in the wobble position.