The reassignment of stop codons is common among many ciliate species. For example, Tetrahymena species recognize only UGA as a stop codon, while Euplotes species recognize only UAA and UAG as stop codons. Recent studies have shown that domain 1 of the translation termination factor eRF1 mediates stop codon recognition. While it is commonly assumed that changes in domain 1 of ciliate eRF1s are responsible for altered stop codon recognition, this has never been demonstrated in vivo. To carry out such an analysis, we made hybrid proteins that contained eRF1 domain 1 from either Tetrahymena thermophila or Euplotes octocarinatus fused to eRF1 domains 2 and 3 from Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We found that the Tetrahymena hybrid eRF1 efficiently terminated at all three stop codons when expressed in yeast cells, indicating that domain 1 is not the sole determinant of stop codon recognition in Tetrahymena species. In contrast, the Euplotes hybrid facilitated efficient translation termination at UAA and UAG codons but not at the UGA codon. Together, these results indicate that while domain 1 facilitates stop codon recognition, other factors can influence this process. Our findings also indicate that these two ciliate species used distinct approaches to diverge from the universal genetic code.The near-universal nature of the standard genetic code implies that a barrier prevents organisms from easily evolving new coding strategies. However, exceptions to the standard code exist in mitochondria, ciliates, Mycoplasma, Candida, and other species (24). Among the ciliates, Tetrahymena species recognize UGA as a stop codon but have reassigned UAA and UAG to function as glutamine codons (16). Similarly, Euplotes species continue to recognize UAA and UAG as stop codons but have reassigned UGA to function as a cysteine codon (28). The existence of these alternate codes, which frequently include reassignment of the standard stop codons, raises obvious questions about how codon reassignment is carried out.In eukaryotes, the release factors eRF1 and eRF3 are required for translation termination (43,45). Normally, all three stop codons are bound and decoded by eRF1, which is a class I release factor with three functional domains (10, 42). Domain 1 binds to the stop codon and initiates the termination process (1,5,9,20,40). Domain 2 interacts with the peptidyl transferase center of the ribosome and mediates release of the completed polypeptide chain from the peptidyl-tRNA molecule in the ribosomal P site (12, 15). Domain 3 mediates an interaction between eRF1 and its functional partner, eRF3 (7,8,19,27). eRF3 is a class II release factor that contains a GTPase domain. GTP hydrolysis by eRF3 stimulates both polypeptide chain release and proper stop codon recognition by eRF1 (11,35).The eRF1 proteins from ciliates have the same basic domain structure as eRF1s from other eukaryotic species and also share significant sequence homology with them. For example, both Tetrahymena thermophila eRF1 and Euplotes octocarinatus eRF1 share ϳ56% overall a...