Species-specific codon context rules unveil non-neutrality effects of synonymous mutations.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Codon pair usage (codon context) is a species specific gene primary structure feature whose evolutionary and functional roles are poorly understood. The data available show that codon-context has direct impact on both translation accuracy and efficiency, but one does not yet understand how it affects these two translation variables or whether context biases shape gene evolution.

Methodologies/principal findings

Here we study codon-context biases using a set of 72 orthologous highly conserved genes from bacteria, archaea, fungi and high eukaryotes to identify 7 distinct groups of codon context rules. We show that synonymous mutations, i.e., neutral mutations that occur in synonymous codons of codon-pairs, are selected to maintain context biases and that non-synonym

SUBMITTER: Moura GR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3202573 | biostudies-literature | 2011

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature