Genes for highly abundant proteins in Escherichia coli avoid 5' codons that promote ribosomal initiation.

ABSTRACT: In many species highly expressed genes (HEGs) over-employ the synonymous codons that match the more abundant iso-acceptor tRNAs. Bacterial transgene codon randomization experiments report, however, that enrichment with such "translationally optimal" codons has little to no effect on the resultant protein level. By contrast, consistent with the view that ribosomal initiation is rate limiting, synonymous codon usage following the 5' ATG greatly influences protein levels, at least in part by modifying RNA stability. For the design of bacterial transgenes, for simple codon based in silico inference of protein levels and for understanding selection on synonymous mutations, it would be valuable to computationally determine initiation optimality (IO) scores for codons for any given species. One a

SUBMITTER: Lewin LE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10599525 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature