Synthesis of azide congeners of preQ1 as potential substrates for tRNA guanine transglycosylase

Abstract

AbstractPreQ1 (2) is a precursor of queuine (1) that in eubacteria is incorporated into transfer RNA (tRNA) by tRNA guanine transglycosylase (TGT) before being further elaborated into queuine. The queuine modification is unusual and occurs across all eukaryotes and eubacteria with few exceptions, but its function remains unclear. As the modified nucleotide occurs through incorporation of a specially synthesized nucleotide instead of via modification of a genetically encoded base, a study of the sites of modification by prepared probes is possible. We report the synthesis of two novel azide congeners (3,4) of preQ1 for this purpose. The evaluation of their interaction with TGT shows that both probes act as weak competitive inhibitors of guanine exchange of guanine(34) tRNATyr with a Ki of ~70 μM. However, we could not show that these are substrates for TGT‐catalyzed incorporation into tRNA. We believe the reason for this is a marked loss of binding due to the azide functionality of 3 and 4 abrogating the possibility of two hydrogen bonds to the carbonyl group of Leu231 and Met260 of TGT, previously observed for the terminal methylene amine of preQ1 by x‐ray crystallography.