Primary sequence and post‐transcriptional modification pattern of an unusual mitochondrial tRNAMet from Tetrahymena pyriformis

Abstract
In a previous investigation of the rDNA region in Tetrahymena pyriformis mitochondrial DNA, we identified a putative tRNAMet gene [Heinonen et al. (1987) J. Biol. Chem. 262, 2879–2887]. On the basis of Northern hybridization analyses, we suggested that this gene is expressed, even though the resulting tRNA would be unusually small and have an atypical dihydrouridine stem‐loop domain. We report here the complete nucleotide sequence and post‐transcriptional modification pattern of this tRNAMet, confirming its predicted primary structure and supporting the view that this structurally aberrant species functions in translation in T. pyriformis mitochondria.