@article {3129,
	title = {The Dnmt2 RNA methyltransferase homolog of Geobacter sulfurreducens specifically methylates tRNA-Glu.},
	journal = {Nucleic Acids Res},
	volume = {42},
	year = {2014},
	month = {2014 Jun},
	pages = {6487-96},
	abstract = {<p>Dnmt2 enzymes are conserved in eukaryotes, where they methylate C38 of tRNA-Asp with high activity. Here, the activity of one of the very few prokaryotic Dnmt2 homologs from Geobacter species (GsDnmt2) was investigated. GsDnmt2 was observed to methylate tRNA-Asp from flies and mice. Unexpectedly, it had only a weak activity toward its matching Geobacter tRNA-Asp, but methylated Geobacter tRNA-Glu with good activity. In agreement with this result, we show that tRNA-Glu is methylated in Geobacter while the methylation is absent in tRNA-Asp. The activities of Dnmt2 enzymes from Homo sapiens, Drosophila melanogaster, Schizosaccharomyces pombe and Dictyostelium discoideum for methylation of the Geobacter tRNA-Asp and tRNA-Glu were determined showing that all these Dnmt2s preferentially methylate tRNA-Asp. Hence, the GsDnmt2 enzyme has a swapped transfer ribonucleic acid (tRNA) specificity. By comparing the different tRNAs, a characteristic sequence pattern was identified in the variable loop of all preferred tRNA substrates. An exchange of two nucleotides in the variable loop of murine tRNA-Asp converted it to the corresponding variable loop of tRNA-Glu and led to a strong reduction of GsDnmt2 activity. Interestingly, the same loss of activity was observed with human DNMT2, indicating that the variable loop functions as a specificity determinant in tRNA recognition of Dnmt2 enzymes.</p>},
	keywords = {Animals, Bacterial Proteins, Geobacter, Humans, Methylation, Mice, Nucleic Acid Conformation, RNA, Transfer, Asp, RNA, Transfer, Glu, Substrate Specificity, tRNA Methyltransferases},
	issn = {1362-4962},
	doi = {10.1093/nar/gku256},
	author = {Shanmugam, Raghuvaran and Aklujkar, Muktak and Sch{\"a}fer, Matthias and Reinhardt, Richard and Nickel, Olaf and Reuter, Gunter and Lovley, Derek R and Ehrenhofer-Murray, Ann and Nellen, Wolfgang and Ankri, Serge and Helm, Mark and Jurkowski, Tomasz P and Jeltsch, Albert}
}
