Compensatory mutations in the L30e kink-turn RNA-protein complex.

The S. cerevisiae ribosomal protein L30e is an autoregulatory protein that binds to its own pre-mRNA and mature mRNA to inhibit splicing and translation, respectively. The L30e RNA-binding element is a stem-asymmetric loop-stem that forms a kink-turn.

Internal loop mutations in the ribosomal protein L30 binding site of the yeast L30 RNA transcript.

Yeast ribosomal protein L30 binds to an asymmetric, purine-rich internal loop in its transcript to repress its own splicing and translation. The protein-bound form of the stem-internal loop-stem RNA is an example of a kink-turn RNA structural motif. Analysis of kink-turn motifs reveals that in (2 + 5) internal loops, the identities of five nucleotides are very important, while the remaining two may be varied.