Analysis of codon usage pattern of mitochondrial ND genes in Platyhelminthes

Codon Usage Provide Insights into the Adaptation of Rice Genes under Stress Condition

Plants experience different stresses, i.e., abiotic, or biotic, and to combat them, plants re-program the expression of growth-, metabolism-, and resistance-related genes. These genes differ in their synonymous codon usage frequency and show codon usage bias. Here, we investigated the correlation among codon usage bias, gene expression, and underlying mechanisms in rice under abiotic and biotic stress conditions. The results indicated that genes with higher expression (up- or downregulated) levels had high GC content (≥60%), a low effective number of codon usage (≤40), and exhibited strong biases towards the codons with C/G at the third nucleotide position, irrespective of stress received. TTC, ATC, and CTC were the most preferred codons, while TAC, CAC, AAC, GAC, and TGC were moderately preferred under any stress (abiotic or biotic) condition. Additionally, downregulated genes are under mutational pressure (R² ≥ 0.5) while upregulated genes are under natural selection pressure (R² ≤ 0.5). Based on these results, we also identified the possible target codons that can be used to design an optimized set of genes with specific codons to develop climate-resilient varieties. Conclusively, under stress, rice has a bias towards codon usage which is correlated with GC content, gene expression level, and gene length.

Codon usage pattern and genetic diversity in chloroplast genomes of Panicum species

Exploring the molecular identities and the genetic diversity of a plant species is crucial in figuring out the evolutionary pressure of genes as well as in molecular breeding application. Nineteen chloroplast genomes of Panicum species in the National Center for Biotechnology Information database were downloaded and analyzed. The base composition, the effective number of codons, the relative synonymous codon usage, the codon bias index and the codon adaptation index of all genes in all chloroplast genomes, as well as the correlation coefficient among them, were calculated and discussed. The correspondence analysis and the clustering characteristics among nineteen genomes base on the relative synonymous codon usage values of nineteen chloroplast genomes were calculated and analyzed. In order to figuring out the evolutionary diversity of certain genes, the codon usage pattern of forty-one typical genes were separately counted and compared. Summations of their standard deviations were considered to evaluate their genetic diversities. The results of codon usage pattern showed that all genes were obvious AU-rich ones in chloroplast genomes of Panicum species, revealing that the natural selection was the main factor that influenced their evolutionary process. The correspondence and clustering analysis among nineteen chloroplast genomes showed that the overall evolutionary differences among them were not significant. However, the analysis on the genetic diversity of tyical genes showed that the degrees of diversity are different, and that the shorter sequences are more prone to instability. These findings would improve our understanding on the evolution of chloroplast genomes of Panicum species and be useful for further study on their evolutionary phenomenon.

Codon usage pattern and evolutionary forces of mitochondrial ND genes among orders of class Amphibia

In this study, we used a bioinformatics approach to analyze the nucleotide composition and pattern of synonymous codon usage in mitochondrial ND genes in three amphibian groups, that is, orders Anura, Caudata, and Gymnophiona to identify the commonality and the differences of codon usage as no research work was reported yet. The high value of the effective number of codons revealed that the codon usage bias (CUB) was low in mitochondrial ND genes among the orders. Nucleotide composition analysis suggested that for each gene, the compositional features differed among Anura, Caudata, and Gymnophiona and the GC content was lower than AT content. Furthermore, a highly significant difference (p < .05) for GC content was found in each gene among the orders. The heat map showed contrasting patterns of codon usage among different ND genes. The regression of GC12 on GC3 suggested a narrow range of GC3 distribution and some points were located in the diagonal, indicating both mutation pressure and natural selection might influence the CUB. Moreover, the slope of the regression line was less than 0.5 in all ND genes among orders, indicating natural selection might have played the dominant role whereas mutation pressure had played a minor role in shaping CUB of ND genes across orders.