In the presence of GTP or GDP, there is a decrease in the circular dichroic absorption of ribosomal proteins L7 and L12 at 221-222 nm, suggesting that these nucleotides influence the helical content of these proteins.All of the proteins from the 30S and 50S ribosomal subunits of Escherichia coli have been purified to homogeneity (1-5), although little is known about the function of these proteins in polypeptide synthesis. Recently Hamel et al. (6) and our laboratory (7) reported the isolation of a ribosomal protein fraction from E. coli that is required for the function of both elongation factors Tu (EF-Tu) and G (EF-G). We concluded-on the basis of disc gel electrophoresis at pH 4.5, amino-acid analysis, and molecular weight-that the purified material contains two proteins identical to the Al and A2 proteins described by M6ller et at. (8), and proteins L7 and L,2 isolated by Wittmann and his coworkers (9-11). The latter designations will be used in this report. These two proteins appear identical by all physical parameters measured. Thus, they are both acidic, have molecular weights of about 13,000, have a high a-helical content, similar amino-acid analysis, and are immunologically crossreactive. The only difference appears to be that L7 contains an N-acetylated amino-terminal serine, whereas in L12 the N-terminal serine is unblocked (12).In view of the high helicity of proteins L7 and L12, and the fact that their presence on the ribosome is required for the GTP-dependent EF-Tu and EF-G reactions in protein synthesis, it seemed of interest to investigate whether the helical nature of these proteins could be altered in any way. For example, one could speculate that these helical proteins, by virtue of their ability to undergo a reversible conformational change, may be involved in movement of the ribosome along messenger RNA. The present report describes the effect of various nucleotides on the circular dichroism (CD) spectra of a mixture of proteins L7 and L12.
MATERIALS AND METHODSE. coli ribosomes were isolated and washed in a buffered 1 M NH4C1 solution (13). These salt-washed ribosomes were treated with 40% ethanol in the presence of 1 M NH4Cl (6, 7), and the ribosomal proteins L7 and L12 were purified together (7) from the ethanolic supernatant. The CD spectra were performed at room temperature in a 0.01-cm cell on a Cary 61 recording spectropolarimeter. The standard mixture contained 10 mM (each) of Tris HCl buffer (pH 7.4), MgC12, NH4C1, and, where indicated, the following were added (final concentrations): 0.7 mg/ml of a mixture of ribosomal proteins L7 and L12, 0.7 mg/ml of EF-G, and 2.5 mM or 4 mM nucleotide. The data are expressed as the mean residue ellipticity (0) (deg. cm2/dmol), and are not corrected for the refractive index of the solvent. A value of 117 was used as the mean residue weight of the ribosomal proteins, and 127 for the mean residue weight of EF-G.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Fig. 1 shows the CD spectra of the ribosomal proteins and of EF-G. The spectrum of the mixture of L7 and L12...