Elucidation of Codon Usage Signatures across the Domains of Life.

ABSTRACT: Because of the degeneracy of the genetic code, multiple codons are translated into the same amino acid. Despite being "synonymous," these codons are not equally used. Selective pressures are thought to drive the choice among synonymous codons within a genome, while GC content, which is typically attributed to mutational drift, is the major determinant of variation across species. Here, we find that in addition to GC content, interspecies codon usage signatures can also be detected. More specifically, we show that a single amino acid, arginine, is the major contributor to codon usage bias differences across domains of life. We then exploit this finding and show that domain-specific codon bias signatures can be used to classify a given sequence into its corresponding domain of life with high

SUBMITTER: Novoa EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6759073 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature