While the genomes of many Mycoplasma species have been sequenced, there are no collated data on translational start codon usage, and the effects of alternate start codons on gene expression have not been studied. Analysis of the annotated genomes found that ATG was the most prevalent translational start codon among Mycoplasma spp. However in Mycoplasma gallisepticum a GTG start codon is commonl...

Recent studies suggest that normal tissue radiosensitivity is influenced by single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in certain genes. In order to seek a confirmation of these findings, this study investigated SNPs in genes TGFB1 (position -509, codon 10 and codon 25), SOD2 (codon 16), XRCC1 (codon 399), XRCC3 (codon 241), APEX (codon 148) and ATM (codon 1853) in 26 breast cancer patients with ma...

BACKGROUND Codon usage and codon-pair context are important gene primary structure features that influence mRNA decoding fidelity. In order to identify general rules that shape codon-pair context and minimize mRNA decoding error, we have carried out a large scale comparative codon-pair context analysis of 119 fully sequenced genomes. METHODOLOGIES/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS We have developed mathemat...

DNA codons, consisting of triplet nucleotides (NTs), could play important roles for RNA transcription and protein translation in living systems. Therefore, their recognition be seen diagnosis therapy purposes. Based on sequence formations Adenine (A), Guanine (G), Cytosine (C) Thymine (T) NTs, 64 codons were investigated this work regarding complexation with a molecular cubane (CUB) wire. To ac...

In-frame stop codons normally signal termination during mRNA translation, but they can be read as 'sense' (readthrough) depending on their context, comprising the 6 nt preceding and following the stop codon. To identify novel contexts directing readthrough, under-represented 5' and 3' stop codon contexts from Saccharomyces cerevisiae were identified by genome-wide survey in silico. In contrast ...

In Escherichia coli (E. coli), a low-usage codon is defined as a codon that is used rarely or infrequently in the genome with usage frequency lower than the smallest value (or frequency cut-off) among the usage frequencies of non-degenerate codons (Met codon AUG and Trp codon UGG) and the optimal codons for amino acids Leu, Ile, Val, Ser, Pro, Thr, Ala, Arg, Gly and Gln that have 2 or more dege...

The effective number of codons (N(c)) is a widely used index for characterizing codon usage bias because it does not require a set of reference genes as does codon adaptation index (CAI) and because of the freely available computational tools such as CodonW. However, N(c), as originally formulated has many problems. For example, it can have values far greater than the number of sense codons; it...

Codon nonsense mutations include amber, ochre, or opal mutations according to termination codon consisting of three types (TAG, TAA and TGA). Codon nonsense mutations are also divided into natural and artificial mutations. We discussed the interaction of codon nonsense mutations and suppressor tRNAs in vitro and in vivo. Nonsense suppressions do not only happen in prokaryotes but also in eukary...