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Structure of a bacterial 30S ribosomal subunit at 5.5 Å resolution

Nature volume 400, pages 833–840 (1999)Cite this article

Abstract

The 30S ribosomal subunit binds messenger RNA and the anticodon stem-loop of transfer RNA during protein synthesis. A crystallographic analysis of the structure of the subunit from the bacterium Thermus thermophilus is presented. At a resolution of 5.5 Å, the phosphate backbone of the ribosomal RNA is visible, as are the α-helices of the ribosomal proteins, enabling double-helical regions of RNA to be identified throughout the subunit, all seven of the small-subunit proteins of known crystal structure to be positioned in the electron density map, and the fold of the entire central domain of the small-subunit ribosomal RNA to be determined.

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Figure 1: Electron-density map of the 30S subunit at 5.5 Å resolution.
Figure 2: Features visible at 5.5 Å resolution.
Figure 3: The central domain of 16S RNA.
Figure 4: Stereo view of the three-way junction formed by helices 20, 21 and 22 of the central domain of 16S RNA.
Figure 5: Stereo view of the interactions made by helix 27 of the central domain with helices 24 and 44 of 16S RNA.
Figure 6: Stereo view of the relative disposition of proteins S4, S5 and S8 as they occur in the 30S subunit.
Figure 7: Two orthogonal stereo views of the 30S subunit.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by grants from the US NIH (to S. W. White & V.R.), the UK MRC and the University of Utah. Beamlines X12B and X25 at the NSLS are supported by the Office of Basic Energy Research of the US Department of Energy and by the NIH. We thank L. Berman and H. Lewis for their help on beamline X25; T. Terwilliger for advice on using SOLVE; P. Reversi and C. Vonrhein for discussions on phasing strategies; M. Pope for gifts of compounds of polytungstate clusters; J. Löwe and G.Schneider for gifts of hexatantalum bromide; B. S. Brunschwig and M. H. Chou for synthesizing osmium hexammine chloride; and S. C. Harrison, K. Nagai and D. Rhodes for critical comments on the manuscript. Coordinates for our partial model fo the 30S have been deposited in the protein data bank, with accession number 1QD7.

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Author notes

  1. William M. Clemons, Joanna L. C. May, Brian T. Wimberly and V. Ramakrishnan: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, 84103, Utah, USA

    William M. Clemons Jr, Joanna L. C. May, Brian T. Wimberly, John P. McCutcheon & V. Ramakrishnan

  2. Biology Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, 11973, New York, USA

    Malcolm S. Capel

  3. Structural Studies Division, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, CB2 2QH, Cambridge, UK

    V. Ramakrishnan

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Correspondence to V. Ramakrishnan.

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Clemons, W., May, J., Wimberly, B. et al. Structure of a bacterial 30S ribosomal subunit at 5.5 Å resolution. Nature 400, 833–840 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/23631

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