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Mechanisms supporting aminoadenine-based viral DNA genomes

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Abstract

Bacteriophage genomes are the richest source of modified nucleobases of any life form. Of these, 2,6 diaminopurine, which pairs with thymine by forming three hydrogen bonds violates Watson and Crick’s base pairing. 2,6 diaminopurine initially found in the cyanophage S-2L is more widespread than expected and has also been detected in phage infecting Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. The biosynthetic pathway for aminoadenine containing DNA as well as the exclusion of adenine are now elucidated. This example of a natural deviation from the genetic code represents only one of the possibilities explored by nature and provides a proof of concept for the synthetic biology of non-canonical nucleic acids.

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Availability of data and materials

The atomic coordinates of PhiVC8 PurZ, S-2L DatZ and S-2L MazZ have been deposited in the Protein Data Bank with the accession codes 6FLF, 6FM0, 6FM1, 6TNH; 6ZPB and 6ZPC; 7ODY.

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Acknowledgements

I thank Professor Patrick Trieu-Cuot for his support.

Funding

This study was funded from the French government’s Investissement d’Avenir program, Laboratoire d’Excellence Integrative Biology of Emerging Infectious Diseases (Grant No. ANR-10-LABX-62-IBEID).

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  1. Biologie des Bactéries Pathogènes à Gram-Positif, Institut Pasteur, CNRS-UMR 2001, Paris, France

    P. A. Kaminski

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Kaminski, P.A. Mechanisms supporting aminoadenine-based viral DNA genomes. Cell. Mol. Life Sci. 79, 51 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00018-021-04055-7

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