[1][2][3] Nonsense suppressors are a useful genetic tool, but can also result in problematic side effects, since all identical stop codons in the genome will also be suppressed to the same degree.
In synthetic biology, artificial suppressor elongator tRNAs are used to incorporate unnatural amino acids at nonsense codons placed in the coding sequence of a gene.
This model recapitulates a human LSD, mucopolysaccharidosis disease type I (or Hurler Syndrome), caused by absence of the enzyme α-l-iduronidase (IDUA) leading to accumulation of glycosaminoglycans (GAG) and resulting pathogenesis.
Escherichia coli strains carrying nonsense suppressor genes had a central role in the early work on bacteriophage genetics.
[11][12] Nonsense suppression by altered tRNA was demonstrated in the archaeon Haloferax volcana for the chain terminating stop codons UAG (amber), UAA (ochre) and UGA (opal).