We have reported a gal mutant called galE stop0, wherein the galE stop
codon was changed to a sense codon. The experiment results demonstrated
that preventing galE translation termination inhibited the production of
galE 3’ ends. This implies that when the galE translation termination
was prevented, the galE 3’ ends generation was reduced or impaired. We
anticipated that the translation of galE would continue to galT,
producing a chimeric protein GalE-GalT. This study verified that the
chimeric protein was produced, but unexpectedly, we found that the GalT
protein was also synthesized in the mutant, and its amount equaled that
in the wild-type. In the wild-type, we also found that the GalE-GalT
chimeric protein was produced in an amount equal to that of the GalE
protein. These results suggest that translation termination of galE and
translation initiation of galT occur independently, thus, corroborating
our transcription-translation model: At the cistron junction,
transcription, decoupled from translation due to the translation
termination of galE, needs translation initiation of galT to continue
downstream; otherwise, transcription would be terminated by Rho.
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