Engineering the Translation Apparatus to Incorporate Nonnatural Amino Acids

Incorporation of nonnatural amino acids into proteins has exerted great effects on many fields. In recent years, the engineering of translation apparatus facilitates the boom of this field. The modifications on tRNAs, tRNA synthetases, ribosomes, elongation factors and release factors efficiently broaden the repertoire of amino acids and largely increase the efficiency of incorporation. In addition, deep understanding of the translation mechanism helps us generate certain kinds of RNAs which can act as alternative translation components to catalyze the aminoacylation step or inhibitors to attenuate the activity of a certain component. Here I review the strategies to evolve or engineer the components of translation apparatus as well as the methods to control their activity to meet our needs.