IDENTIFICATION OF A HUMAN CDNA WITH HIGH HOMOLOGY TO YEAST OMNIPOTENT SUPPRESSOR-45

Omnipotent suppression is a well-established phenomenon in yeast and bacteria in which nonsense mutations are misread. Wild-type (wt) suppressors are presumed to be involved in ensuring the fidelity of translation. We report a human homolog to wt yeast omnipotent suppressor 45 which shares 63% identity at the nucleotide level in the area of open reading frame (ORF) and 73% similarity at the amino acid (aa) level. The aa sequence of the human protein was deduced from a 2.3-kb cDNA (TB3-1) isolated from an adenocarcinoma T84 cell line cDNA library. The cDNA contains an ORF of 1284 bp which encodes a 47.8-kDa protein. Two transcripts for the clone were identified (2.6 and 4.0 kb) in a variety of human cell types. The strong structural similarity to yeast omnipotent suppressor 45, and its widespread expression suggest that this cDNA may play a role in the accurate recognition of nonsense codons in mammalian cells.