Nitrogen versus carbon use in prokaryotic genomes and proteomes

There is growing recognition that the elemental composition of genomes and proteins can be related to resource limitation. We examine the possibility that the elemental composition of nucleic acids and the amino acids (and proteins) they encode are correlated. We report a positive association betwee...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences Biological sciences, 2004-08, Vol.271 (Suppl 5), p.S374-S377
Main Authors: Bragg, J. G., Hyder, C. L.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amino acids
Amino Acids - chemistry
Atoms
Base Composition
Carbon
Carbon - analysis
Cc Content
Codon
Codons
DNA - chemistry
Ecological Genomics
Genome
Genome, Archaeal
Genome, Bacterial
Genomes
Nitrogen
Nitrogen - analysis
Prokaryotes
Proteome
Proteome - chemistry
Proteomes
Symbionts
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Summary:There is growing recognition that the elemental composition of genomes and proteins can be related to resource limitation. We examine the possibility that the elemental composition of nucleic acids and the amino acids (and proteins) they encode are correlated. We report a positive association between the stoichiometric ratio of N/C content of individual amino acids and their codons. Potentially, this is an outcome of chemical interactions between amino acids and anticodons that influenced the evolution of the genetic code. We also find a strong, positive relationship between N/C values of whole genomes and proteomes, across 94 prokaryotic species. This relationship is part of a spectrum in nitrogen versus carbon use across genomes and proteomes, which is correlated with genomic GC content. GC content is correlated positively with average nitrogen use, and negatively with average carbon use, across both genomes and proteomes.
ISSN:0962-8452
1471-2954
DOI:10.1098/rsbl.2004.0193