When nonsense makes sense and vice versa: Noncanonical decoding events at stop codons in eukaryotes

Regulation of protein synthesis at the level of translation termination is a relatively underexplored, but rapidly expanding field. Recent advances in elucidating the mechanism of translation termination are helping to understand noncanonical events associated with translation termination. These “recording” events include read-through of stop codons, insertion of unusual amino acids such as selenocysteine, and production of several polypeptides from one open reading frame. This review summarizes data on termination-dependent recording events and proposes that there are two types of stop codon-associated sequences optimized to perform different functions: termination of translation per se or alternative elongation events. Published in Russian in Molekulyarnaya Biologiya, 2006, Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 731–741. The article is published in the original.