About the Workshop
The remarkable diversity of genetic decoding was unanticipated when it was first deciphered. Over the past fifty years, numerous variations have been discovered. These include variant genetic codes in which the meaning of specific codons is reassigned in entire genomes, as well as Recoding mechanisms affecting individual or small subsets of mRNAs. Recoding mechanisms include the incorporation of non-standard proteinogenic amino acids (selenocysteine and pyrrolysine), stop codon readthrough, ribosomal frameshifting, trans-translation, and bypassing of untranslated mRNA regions. The past decade has yielded numerous discoveries of novel mechanisms and improved our understanding of the molecular basis of the known mechanisms. Examples of novel genetic code variants include those with all 64 codons encoding amino acids and a genetic code that employs ribosomal frameshifting as a standard feature. CryoEM has revealed structures of ribosomes during recoding events, such as frameshifting during decoding of the SARS-CoV-2 mRNA. Biophysical methods greatly improved our understanding of alternative decoding, for example, by revealing unexpected energetic requirements for ribosome sliding during translational bypassing. This workshop aims to provide a unique opportunity for a meeting between researchers with a common interest in alternative genetic decoding, but with diverse expertise, such as molecular evolution, bioinformatics, molecular genetics, structural biology, biochemistry and biophysics.
About EMBO Courses and Workshops
EMBO Courses and Workshops are selected for their excellent scientific quality and timelines, provision of good networking activities for all participants and speaker gender diversity (at least 40% of speakers must be from the underrepresented gender).
Organisers are encouraged to implement measures to make the meeting environmentally more sustainable.
