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Updated: Aug 10, 2026

Quantitative Comparison of cis-Regulatory Element (CRE) Activities in Transgenic Drosophila melanogaster
Published on: December 19, 2011
Evolutionary change of codon usage for the histone gene family in Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila hydei
1Laboratory of Adaptive Evolution, Department of Mathematical and Natural Sciences, Faculty of Integrated Arts and Sciences, The University of Tokushima, Minamijosanjimacho 1-1, Tokushima, 770-8502, Japan.
Abstract:
The nucleotide divergence in the protein-coding region for replication-dependent and replication-independent histone 3 and 4 genes of Drosophila melanogaster and Drosophila hydei occurred mostly at the synonymous site. Therefore, the pattern of codon usage was analyzed in the two species, considering the genomic codon bias, which is proposed for estimating the genomic composition pressure in the protein-coding regions. The results indicated that the codon usage in the histone gene family could be explained mostly by the genomic codon bias. However, biases for Ala and Arg were commonly observed for the histone 3 and histone 4 gene families, and biases for Ser, Leu, and Glu were observed in a gene-specific manner. This suggests that both genomic codon bias and gene- or codon-specific bias are responsible for the nucleotide differentiation in the protein-coding region of the histone genes.
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