Leakiness of termination codons in mitochondrial mutants of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Seven mutants in exon 1 of the mitochondrial cob gene in yeast are described with respect to their translation products, RNA pattern, and deoxyribonucleotide sequence alteration(s). Sequence analysis of the mutations, which previously were shown to cause premature termination of apocytochrome b, revealed that two of them directly transform sense codons to chain-termination codons, whereas the other four are frame-shift mutations (+1/-1, insertions/deletions). Only the latter mutants are found to be leaky in that (a) RNA splicing occurs, and (b) in three of them, to a minor degree an apocytochrome b homologue is synthesized, which, however, does not lead to respiratory competence. Both require translation through exon 1 into downstream introns to produce 'RNA maturases' necessary for splicing the primary transcript (Lazowska et al. 1980; Weiss-Brummer et al. 1982). These and other previously published data show that mitochondrial frame-shift mutants tend to be leaky to a variable degree. Several possible mechanisms of 'frame-shift suppression' are discussed.