Mitochondrial ribosomal protein L4 explained

39S ribosomal protein L4, mitochondrial is a protein that in humans is encoded by the MRPL4 gene.^[1]

Mammalian mitochondrial ribosomal proteins are encoded by nuclear genes and help in protein synthesis within the mitochondrion. Mitochondrial ribosomes (mitoribosomes) consist of a small 28S subunit and a large 39S subunit. They have an estimated 75% protein to rRNA composition compared to prokaryotic ribosomes, where this ratio is reversed. Another difference between mammalian mitoribosomes and prokaryotic ribosomes is that the latter contain a 5S rRNA. Among different species, the proteins comprising the mitoribosome differ greatly in sequence, and sometimes in biochemical properties, which prevents easy recognition by sequence homology. This gene encodes a 39S subunit protein. Sequence analysis identified alternatively spliced variants that encode different protein isoforms.

Further reading

• Andersson B, Wentland MA, Ricafrente JY, etal . A "double adaptor" method for improved shotgun library construction . Anal. Biochem. . 236 . 1 . 107–13 . 1996 . 8619474 . 10.1006/abio.1996.0138 .
• Yu W, Andersson B, Worley KC, etal . Large-Scale Concatenation cDNA Sequencing . Genome Res. . 7 . 4 . 353–8 . 1997 . 9110174 . 10.1101/gr.7.4.353. 139146 .
• Lai CH, Chou CY, Ch'ang LY, etal . Identification of Novel Human Genes Evolutionarily Conserved in Caenorhabditis elegans by Comparative Proteomics . Genome Res. . 10 . 5 . 703–13 . 2000 . 10810093 . 10.1101/gr.10.5.703 . 310876 .
• Suzuki T, Terasaki M, Takemoto-Hori C, etal . Structural compensation for the deficit of rRNA with proteins in the mammalian mitochondrial ribosome. Systematic analysis of protein components of the large ribosomal subunit from mammalian mitochondria . J. Biol. Chem. . 276 . 24 . 21724–36 . 2001 . 11279069 . 10.1074/jbc.M100432200 . free .
• Kenmochi N, Suzuki T, Uechi T, etal . The human mitochondrial ribosomal protein genes: mapping of 54 genes to the chromosomes and implications for human disorders . Genomics . 77 . 1–2 . 65–70 . 2001 . 11543634 . 10.1006/geno.2001.6622 .
• Strausberg RL, Feingold EA, Grouse LH, etal . Generation and initial analysis of more than 15,000 full-length human and mouse cDNA sequences . Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. . 99 . 26 . 16899–903 . 2003 . 12477932 . 10.1073/pnas.242603899 . 139241 . 2002PNAS...9916899M . free .
• Zhang Z, Gerstein M . Identification and characterization of over 100 mitochondrial ribosomal protein pseudogenes in the human genome . Genomics . 81 . 5 . 468–80 . 2003 . 12706105 . 10.1016/S0888-7543(03)00004-1 .
• Gerhard DS, Wagner L, Feingold EA, etal . The Status, Quality, and Expansion of the NIH Full-Length cDNA Project: The Mammalian Gene Collection (MGC) . Genome Res. . 14 . 10B . 2121–7 . 2004 . 15489334 . 10.1101/gr.2596504 . 528928 .
• Rual JF, Venkatesan K, Hao T, etal . Towards a proteome-scale map of the human protein-protein interaction network . Nature . 437 . 7062 . 1173–8 . 2005 . 16189514 . 10.1038/nature04209 . 2005Natur.437.1173R . 4427026 .

Notes and References

1. Web site: Entrez Gene: MRPL4 mitochondrial ribosomal protein L4.