Translational selection on codon usage in the genus Aspergillus

Andrés Iriarte, Manuel Sanguinetti, Tamara Fernández-Calero, Hugo Naya, Ana Ramón, Héctor Musto

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

20 Scopus citations

Abstract

Aspergillus is a genus of mold fungi that includes more than 200 described species. Many members of the group are relevant pathogens and other species are economically important. Only one species has been analyzed for codon usage, and this was performed with a small number of genes. In this paper, we report the codon usage patterns of eight completely sequenced genomes which belong to this genus. The results suggest that selection for translational efficiency and accuracy are the major factors shaping codon usage in all of the species studied so far, and therefore they were active in the last common ancestor of the group. Composition and molecular distances analyses show that highly expressed genes evolve slower at synonymous sites. We identified a conserved core of translationally optimal codons and study the tRNA gene pool in each genome. We found that the great majority of preferred triplets match the respective cognate tRNA with more copies in the respective genome. We discuss the possible scenarios that can explain the observed differences among the species analyzed. Finally we highlight the biotechnological application of this research regarding heterologous protein expression.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)98-105
Number of pages8
JournalGene
Volume506
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 10 Sep 2012
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • $Aspergilli$Neosartorya$Translational selection$Optimal codons$TRNA content
  • Aspergilli
  • Neosartorya
  • Optimal codons
  • TRNA content
  • Translational selection

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