Effect of tandemly repeated AGG triplets on the translation of CAT-mRNA in E. coli

It has been shown that tandems of rare arginine codons AGG have a strong inhibitory effect on translation of mRNA in E. coli [5]. This has been explained by the rate-limiting interaction of these codons with the less abundant tRNA AGG [6]. In this study tandemly repeated AGG triplets were introduced into the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (CAT) gene either upstream of the initiation ATG codon or downstream of it (both in frame and out of frame) and the expression of the modified genes was investigated. We report that the addition of AGG clusters resulted in a substantial inhibitory effect on CAT gene expression independently of their localization in mRNA. This inhibitory effect is explained by a competition of the tandem AGGAGG with the natural Shine—Dalgarno (SD) sequence (consensus AAGGAGGU) for the 3′-end of the 16S small ribosomal RNA (rRNA).