Aminoglycoside sensitivity of ribosomes from the archaebacteriumMethanococcus vannielii: Structure-activity relationship

Aminoglycoside-induced mistranslation in thermophilic archaebacteria

The effect of selected aminoglycoside antibiotics on the translational accuracy of poly(U) programmed ribosomes derived from the thermophilic archaebacteria Thermoplasma acidophilum, Sulfolobus solfataricus, Thermococcus celer and Desulfurococcus mobilis has been determined. Under optimum temperature and ionic conditions for polyphenylalanine synthesis, the four species investigated are found to be markedly diverse in their response to the miscoding-inducing action of aminoglycoside antibiotics. T. acidophilum is sensitive to all of the compounds tested except streptomycin; S. solfataricus responds to paromomycin and to hygromycin B; T. celer is only affected by neomycin, and D. mobilis is refractory to all drugs. The only feature shared by the four species under study, and by all archaebacteria so far investigated, is their complete insensitivity to streptomycin. The structural and phylogenetic implications of the remarkable diversity encountered among archaebacterial ribosomes in their susceptibility to aminoglycosides are discussed.

Sensitivity of thermoacidophilic archaebacteria to alpha-sarcin

The protein synthesis machinery of Sulfolobus solfataricus , a thermoacidophilic archaebacterium, is insensitive to most of the known antibiotics that interfere with elongation. alpha-Sarcin, a cytotoxic protein, inhibits protein synthesis on eukaryotic systems by cleaving a specific sequence of the large rRNA. alpha-Sarcin is capable of inhibiting protein synthesis on S. solfataricus producing a fragment under conditions similar to those which produce it in yeast ribosomes. This result suggests the presence on S. solfataricus of the sequence necessary for the enzymatic hydrolysis promoted by alpha-sarcin.