The Escherichia coli MnmE protein is a three-domain protein that exhibits a very high intrinsic GTPase activity and low affinity for GTP and GDP. The middle GTPase domain, when isolated, conserves the high intrinsic GTPase activity of the entire protein, and the C-terminal domain contains the only cysteine residue present in the molecule. MnmE is an evolutionarily conserved protein that, in E. coli, has been shown to control the modification of the uridine at the wobble position of certain tRNAs. Here we examine the biochemical and functional consequences of altering amino acid residues within conserved motifs of the GTPase and C-terminal domains of MnmE. Our results indicate that both domains are essential for the MnmE tRNA modifying function, which requires effective hydrolysis of GTP. Thus, it is shown for the first time that a confirmed defect in the GTP hydrolase activity of MnmE results in the lack of its tRNA modifying function. Moreover, the mutational analysis of the GTPase domain indicates that MnmE is closer to classical GTPases than to GTP-specific metabolic enzymes. Therefore, we propose that MnmE uses a conformational change associated with GTP hydrolysis to promote the tRNA modification reaction, in which the C-terminal Cys may function as a catalytic residue. We demonstrate that point mutations abolishing the tRNA modifying function of MnmE confer synthetic lethality, which stresses the importance of this function in the mRNA decoding process.The evolutionarily conserved MnmE (TrmE) protein of Escherichia coli is a GTPase that differs extensively from regulatory GTPases such as p21 (1). Thus, MnmE exhibits a very high intrinsic GTPase hydrolysis rate and low affinity for GTP and GDP, and it can form self-assemblies. MnmE has a molecular mass of 50 kDa and is organized as a multidomain protein (see Fig. 1) consisting of an ϳ220-amino acid N-terminal domain, probably required for self-assembly, a middle GTPase domain, of about 160 residues, and an ϳ75-amino acid C-terminal domain, which contains the only Cys residue present in the protein. Strikingly, the isolated GTPase domain roughly conserves the guanine nucleotide binding and GTPase activities of the intact MnmE molecule (1).Null mnmE mutants are defective in the biosynthesis of the hypermodified nucleoside 5-methylaminomethyl-2-thiouridine (mnm 5 s 2 U 34 ) 1 (2), which is found in the wobble position (position 34) of tRNAs that read codons ending with A or G, in the mixed codon family boxes, specifically tRNAs for lysine and glutamic acid (3). The mnmA gene product (6) carries out thiolation in the 2-position of the wobble uridine (U 34 ), whereas mnmE controls the first step of the modification in the 5Ј-position, but it is unclear how many steps precede the formation of cmnm 5 s 2 U 34 (2, 4). Several data support that a second gene, named gidA, trmF, or mnmG, is also involved in the cmnm 5 group addition and that the MnmE activity precedes the activity of GidA (2, 5). The mnmC gene product has two enzymatic activities that transform the cm...