Decoding the biosynthesis and function of diphthamide, an enigmatic modification of translation elongation factor 2 (EF2)

May 20, 2014

This article comments on work published by Uthman et al. (PLoS Genet, 2013), which suggests that Dph5 has a novel role as an EF2 inhibitor that affects cell growth when diphthamide synthesis is blocked or incomplete and shows that diphthamide promotes the accuracy of EF2 performance during translation.