Sampling informational properties of codon usage through the tree of life.

ABSTRACT: The genetic code, a unifying principle in biology, ensures that all organisms, stemming from a Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA), share fundamental rules for translating DNA into proteins. However, codon usage varies across the tree of life, influenced not only by GC-content and proteome composition but also by complex, often less understood rules dependent on each species' evolutionary trajectory. To better understand these rules, we segregated codons into their functional parts and applied Shannon's information-theoretic measures to 1,434 species from eight diverse taxonomic groups. We provide robust evidence that the first codon base plays a central role in amino acid determination, while the third base serves an accessory function. Using conditional entropy measures, we rigorously

SUBMITTER: Martinez O 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12654954 | biostudies-literature | 2025

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature