Figure 2

Frequency distribution of misacylation tendency for sense and antisense tRNAs (white and black columns, respectively). The modal (most frequent) human tRNA sequence was used for each of the 22 mitochondrial tRNA species. TFAM aligns each sequence to reference tRNA sequences with known cognates. Alignment quality with each tRNA reference estimates the tendency of the focal tRNA sequence for acylation with the cognate of the tRNA reference (raw data in Table 2). The x axis indicates the number of tRNA references with cognates differing from the focal tRNA's cognate but aligning better with the focal tRNA sequence than the reference tRNA with the cognate matching the focal tRNA's anticodon. Hence numbers close to zero on the x axis indicate low tendency for misacylation. The y axis is the number of focal tRNAs observed for that x axis. The distribution expected according to a binomial distribution is also shown (see text for further explanations).