Title

Unusual codon usage bias in low expression genes of Vibrio cholerae

Authors

Surajit Basak^1, *, Indranuj Mukherjee¹, Mayukh Choudhury² and Santasabuj Das¹

Affiliation

¹Biomedical Informatics Center, National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases, P-33, C.I.T road, Scheme-XM, Beliaghata, Kolkata 700010, India; ²School of Biotechnology, Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, VIT University, Vellore 632014, India

Email

 basaksurajit@gmail.com; * Corresponding author

Article Type

Hypothesis

Date

received December 01, 2008; accepted December 02, 2008; published December 31, 2008

Abstract

Positive correlation between gene expression and synonymous codon usage bias is well documented in the literature. However, in the present study of Vibrio cholerae genome, we have identified a group of genes having unusually high codon usage bias despite being low potential expressivity. Our results suggest that codon usage in lowly expressed genes might also be selected on to preferably use non-optimal codons to maintain a low cellular concentration of the proteins that they encode. This would predict that lowly expressed genes are also biased in codon usage, but in a way that is opposite to the bias of highly expressed genes.

Keywords

CAI; RSCU; effective number of codons; tRNA copy number; correspondence analysis

Citation

Basak et al., Bioinformation 3(5): 213-217 (2008)

Edited by

P. Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.