Multiple incorporation of non-natural amino acids into a single protein using tRNAs with non-standard structures

The ability to introduce non-natural amino acids into proteins opens up new vistas for the study of protein structure and function. This approach requires suppressor tRNAs that deliver the non-natural amino acid to a ribosome associated with an mRNA containing an expanded codon. The suppressor tRNAs must be absolutely protected from aminoacylation by any of the aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases in the protein synthesizing system, or a natural amino acid will be incorporated instead of the non-natural amino acid. Here, we found that some tRNAs with non-standard structures could work as efficient four-base suppressors fulfilling the above orthogonal conditions. Using these tRNAs, we successfully demonstrated incorporation of three different non-natural amino acids into a single protein.