Novel consensus sequences of bacterial tRNA genes

Abstract

In order to systematically detect candidates of tRNA genes from a bacterial genomic DNA, we tried to establish a set of consensus nucleotides for every 61 anticodons. In addition to purine (r) and pyrimidine (y) for couples of nucleotides consisting of a & g, and t & c, respectively, we uses k(t & g), m(a & c), s(c & g), and w(a & t). We analyzed 30 bacteria whose complete genomes have been known. The result of our analysis shows that there seems not to be a comprehensive set of consensus nucleotides, but some patterns of such sets. Using such patterns may be useful for effective detection of cloverleaf structures of tRNA genes. Classification may be better with such patterns than with anticodon.