Gene expression, amino acid conservation, and hydrophobicity are the main factors shaping codon preferences in Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium leprae

Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium leprae are the ethiological agents of tuberculosis and leprosy, respectively. After performing extensive comparisons between genes from these two GC-rich bacterial species, we were able to construct a set of 275 homologous genes. Since these two bacterial...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of molecular evolution 2000-01, Vol.50 (1), p.45-55
Main Authors: de Miranda, A B, Alvarez-Valin, F, Jabbari, K, Degrave, W M, Bernardi, G
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Amino Acid Sequence
Amino acids
Base Pairing
Codon - genetics
Conserved Sequence
Evolution, Molecular
Gene expression
Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial
Genetic Variation
Leprosy
Molecular biology
Mycobacterium leprae - genetics
Mycobacterium tuberculosis - genetics
Nucleotides - genetics
Principal components analysis
Tuberculosis
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Summary:Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Mycobacterium leprae are the ethiological agents of tuberculosis and leprosy, respectively. After performing extensive comparisons between genes from these two GC-rich bacterial species, we were able to construct a set of 275 homologous genes. Since these two bacterial species also have a very low growth rate, translational selection could not be so determinant in their codon preferences as it is in other fast-growing bacteria. Indeed, principal-components analysis of codon usage from this set of homologous genes revealed that the codon choices in M. tuberculosis and M. leprae are correlated not only with compositional constraints and translational selection, but also with the degree of amino acid conservation and the hydrophobicity of the encoded proteins. Finally, significant correlations were found between GC3 and synonymous distances as well as between synonymous and nonsynonymous distances.
ISSN:0022-2844
1432-1432
DOI:10.1007/s002399910006