Lost in translation: conserved amino acid usage despite extreme codon bias in foraminifera.

ABSTRACT: Analyses of codon usage in eukaryotes suggest that amino acid usage responds to GC pressure so AT-biased substitutions drive higher usage of amino acids with AT-ending codons. Here, we combine single-cell transcriptomics and phylogenomics to explore codon usage patterns in foraminifera, a diverse and ancient clade of predominantly uncultivable microeukaryotes. We curate data from 1,044 gene families in 49 individuals representing 28 genera, generating perhaps the largest existing dataset of data from a predominantly uncultivable clade of protists, to analyze compositional bias and codon usage. We find extreme variation in composition, with a median GC content at fourfold degenerate silent sites below 3% in some species and above 75% in others. The most AT-biased species are distributed amo

SUBMITTER: Cote-L'Heureux AE 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11980380 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature