The molecular biology of selenocysteine

Abstract Selenium is an essential trace element that is incorporated into 25 human proteins as the amino acid selenocysteine (Sec). The incorporation of this amino acid turns out to be a fascinating problem in molecular biology because Sec is encoded by a stop codon, UGA. Layered on top of the canonical translation elongation machinery is a set of factors that exist solely to incorporate this important amino acid. The mechanism by which this process occurs, put into the context of selenoprotein biology, is the focus of this review.

• Publication year

  2013

• Venue

  Biomolecular Concepts

• Publication date

  2013-08-01

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Chemistry

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1515/bmc-2013-0007PMID 25436585PMCID PMC4269102
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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  2007cited by this paper
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