DNA methylation-associated dysregulation of transfer RNA expression in human cancer

Abstract

The human cytoplasmatic pool of tRNA for the 20 proteinogenic amino acids and selenocysteine is composed of 48 isoacceptor families -those tRNA with different anticodons- divided into 253 different isodecoder species -those tRNAs that share the same anticodon but present sequence variations in other positions [1, 2]. All these molecules cooperate to translate the genetic information encoded in mRNA to enable protein synthesis. For many years, tRNAs have been considered as housekeeping molecules without any additional regulatory function, but compelling recent evidence of the intricacy of tRNA biology have proven that this initial misconception was far from reality. In fact, tRNAs actively engage in protein synthesis regulation and in additional molecular processes that are unrelated to translation, like apoptosis prevention and the generation of small derivative non-coding RNAs that perform further cellular functions