{"doi":"10.1093/nar/gkab567","title":"Preferential import of queuosine-modified tRNAs into <i>Trypanosoma brucei</i> mitochondrion is critical for organellar protein synthesis","abstract":"Transfer RNAs (tRNAs) are key players in protein synthesis. To be fully active, tRNAs undergo extensive post-transcriptional modifications, including queuosine (Q), a hypermodified 7-deaza-guanosine present in the anticodon of several tRNAs in bacteria and eukarya. Here, molecular and biochemical approaches revealed that in the protozoan parasite Trypanosoma brucei, Q-containing tRNAs have a preference for the U-ending codons for asparagine, aspartate, tyrosine and histidine, analogous to what has been described in other systems. However, since a lack of tRNA genes in T. brucei mitochondria makes it essential to import a complete set from the cytoplasm, we surprisingly found that Q-modified tRNAs are preferentially imported over their unmodified counterparts. In turn, their absence from mitochondria has a pronounced effect on organellar translation and affects function. Although Q modification in T. brucei is globally important for codon selection, it is more so for mitochondrial protein synthesis. These results provide a unique example of the combined regulatory effect of codon usage and wobble modifications on protein synthesis; all driven by tRNA intracellular transport dynamics.","journal":"Nucleic Acids Research","year":2021,"id":157929,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":48,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9595,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":665948,"name":"Mary Anne T. Rubio","orcid":"0000-0002-2202-5239","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":665949,"name":"Eva Hegedűsová","orcid":"0000-0002-6266-1811","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":332502,"name":"Robert Ross","orcid":"0000-0001-8710-3675","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":332508,"name":"Patrick A. Limbach","orcid":"0000-0003-1526-4546","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":273315,"name":"Juan Alfonzo","orcid":"0000-0002-8503-3316","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":665950,"name":"Zdeněk Paris","orcid":"0000-0003-1019-7719","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":665947,"name":"Sneha Kulkarni","orcid":"0000-0002-2608-8608","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":65,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:44:26.210708Z","pmid":"34244755","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}