BACKGROUND Mitochondrial ND gene, which encodes NADH dehydrogenase, is the first enzyme of the mitochondrial electron transport chain. Leigh syndrome, a neurodegenerative disease caused by mutation in the ND2 gene (T4681C), is associated with bilateral symmetric lesions in basal ganglia and subcortical brain regions. Therefore, it is of interest to analyze mitochondrial DNA to glean information...

To further study the characteristics of peach codon usage, this analyzed usage biases and patterns genome, based on statistical calculations related GC content, effective number codons (ENC) relative synonymous (RSCU) from 26 873 coding sequences. The results showed that there were obvious in peach, 4 out 61 (UCA, ACA, GCA GAA) defined as optimal codons, all which end with Adenine at third posi...

Codon usage can provide insights into the nature of the genes in a genome. Genes that are "native" to a genome (have not been recently acquired by horizontal transfer) range in codon usage from a low-bias "typical" usage to a more biased "high-expression" usage characteristic of genes encoding abundant proteins. Genes that differ from these native codon usages are candidates for foreign genes t...

Highly expressed genes in many bacteria and small eukaryotes often have a strong compositional bias, in terms of codon usage. Two widely used numerical indices, the codon adaptation index (CAI) and the codon usage, use this bias to predict the expression level of genes. Both indices are based on fairly simple assumptions about which genes are most highly expressed, which were known when they we...