Abstract
Mitochondria are obligate organelles of most eukaryotic cells that perform many different functions important for cellular homeostasis. The main role of mitochondria is supplying cells with energy in a form of ATP, which is synthesized in a chain of oxidative phosphorylation reactions on the organelle inner membrane. It is commonly believed now that mitochondria have the endosymbiotic origin. In the course of evolution, they have lost most of their genetic material as a result of genome reduction and gene transfer to the nucleus. The majority of mitochondrial proteins are synthesized in the cytosol and then imported to the mitochondria. However, almost all known mitochondria still contain genomes that are maintained and expressed. The processes of protein biosynthesis in the mitochondria — mitochondrial translation — substantially differs from the analogous processes in bacteria and the cytosol of eukaryotic cells. Mitochondrial translation is characterized by a high degree of specialization and specific regulatory mechanisms. In this review, we analyze available information on the common principles of mitochondrial translation with emphasis on the molecular mechanisms of translation initiation in the mitochondria of yeast and mammalian cells.
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Abbreviations
- fMet-tRNA:
-
formylmethionine-tRNA
- mtIF2 and mtIF3:
-
translation initiation factors 2 and 3, respectively
- 5′-UTR:
-
5′-untranslated region of mRNA
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Russian Text © The Author(s), 2020, published in Biokhimiya, 2020, Vol. 85, No. 3, pp. 299–306.
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This work was supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project 17-14-01005; testing hypotheses on the evolution of mitochondrial translation apparatus) and Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project 19-14-50206).
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Levitskii, S.A., Baleva, M.V., Chicherin, I.V. et al. Protein Biosynthesis in Mitochondria: Past Simple, Present Perfect, Future Indefinite. Biochemistry Moscow 85, 257–263 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1134/S0006297920030013
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S0006297920030013