High Precision Analysis of Translational Pausing in Bacteria Lacking EFP by Ribosome Profiling

Ribosome profiling is a powerful method for globally assessing the activity of ribosomes in a cell. Despite its application in many organisms, ribosome profiling studies in bacteria have struggled to obtain the resolution necessary to precisely define translational pauses. Here we report improvements that yield much higher resolution in E. coli profiling data, enabling us to more accurately assess ribosome pausing and refine earlier studies of the impact of polyproline motifs on elongation. We comprehensively characterize pausing at proline-rich motifs in the absence of elongation factor EFP. We find that only a small fraction of genes with strong pausing motifs have reduced ribosome density downstream and identify features that explain this phenomenon. These features allow us to predict which proteins likely have reduced output in the efp knockout strain. Ribosome profiling of E. coli MG1655 and mutants lacking EFP or its three modifiying enzymes