RqcH and RqcP catalyze processive poly-alanine synthesis

In the cell, stalled ribosomes are rescued through ribosome-associated protein quality-control (RQC) pathways. We demonstrate that RqcH is responsible for tRNAAla selection during RQC elongation, whereas RqcP lacks any tRNA specificity. The ribosomal protein uL11 is crucial for RqcH, but not RqcP, recruitment to the 50S subunit, and B. subtilis lacking uL11 are RQC-deficient. Through mutational mapping, we identify critical residues within RqcH and RqcP that are important for interaction with the P-site tRNA and/or the 50S subunit. Collectively, our findings provide mechanistic insight into the role of RqcH and RqcP in the bacterial RQC pathway. the synthesis of C-terminal poly-Alanine ‘tail’. While it is well-established that RqcP and RqcH are essential for poly-Alanine-tailing in living cells, here, by reconstituting the RQC elongation biochemically we provide a direct proof that the two factors are sufficient. We demonstrate that while RqcH is responsible for tRNAAla selection during RQC elongation, RqcP lacks the tRNA specificity. Through mutational mapping we show that stable interaction of RqcP with 23S rRNA – but not with tRNA – is crucial for RQC, supporting the role of the E-site bound RqcP as a pawl of RQC elongation ratchet. We show that ribosomal protein uL11 is crucial for RqcH – but nor RqcP – recruitment to 50S, and B. subtilis lacking uL11 is RQC-deficient. Finally, we show that proteins encoded by non-stop mRNAs are not universally efficiently targeted by RQC, and that simultaneous disruption of RQC and trans-translation results in bacterial filamentation B. subtilis cell lysate and RqcH-bound (i.e. immunopreciptated, RqcH-IP) tRNAs used for tRNA microarrays to measure tRNA abundance - 4 biological replicates in total; 3 - RqcH-IP and 1 - total tRNA (lysate)