Major
Biological Sciences
Minor(s)
Chemistry; Leadership Studies
Advisor
Gregory, Steven
Advisor Department
Cell and Molecular Biology
Date
5-2022
Keywords
Ribosome; Molecular Biology; Biochemistry
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
Abstract
To suppress the ribosome assembly defective phenotype of a ribosomal protein uS17- deficient mutant, various ribosomal proteins were used to act as multicopy suppressors. Ribosomal protein uS17 is a highly conserved component of the 30S (small) ribosomal subunit and is important for 30S subunit assembly. Mutants with a deletion of rpsQ (the gene encoding uS17) are viable but have a severe 30S subunit assembly defect and a temperature-sensitive (ts) phenotype. While fully assembled 30S subunits do form, incomplete ("20S") particles lacking several proteins accumulate. We hypothesized that increasing the intracellular concentration of one or more of the proteins missing from the 20S particles could drive the binding assembly process forward, thereby partially suppressing the temperature sensitive phenotype.