Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 9, 2025

Identifying Amino Acid Overproducers Using Rare-Codon-Rich Markers
Published on: June 24, 2019
Is there a bias in the codon frequency corresponding to homo-repeats found in human proteins?
Nikita V Dovidchenko1, Mikhail Yu Lobanov2, Oxana V Galzitskaya3
1Gamaleya Research Centre of Epidemiology and Microbiology, 123098, Moscow, Russia; Institute of Protein Research, Russian Academy of Sciences, 142290, Pushchino, Moscow Region, Russia.
Abstract:
It is well known that there is a codon usage bias in genomes, that is, some codons are observed more often than others. Codons implicated in the homo-repeats regions in human proteins are no exception. In this work, we analyzed the codon usage bias for all amino acid residues in homo-repeats larger than 4 in 3753 human proteins from 20447 protein sequences from the canonically reviewed human proteome. We have discovered that almost all homo-repeats in the human proteome, most of which encode Ala, Glu, Gly, Leu, Pro, and Ser (∼80% of all homo-repeats), have a codon usage bias, i.e. are mainly encoded by one codon. Moreover, there is a strong shift in homo-repeats in favor of the content of GC rich codons. Homo-repeats with Ala, Glu, Gly, Leu, Pro, and Ser predominate in the PDB, which has both ordered and disordered status. Examining the distribution of splicing sites, we found that about 15% of homo-repeats either contain or are located within 10 nucleotides of the splicing site, and Glu and Leu predominate in these homo-repeats. Our data is important for future study of the functions of homo-repeats, protein-protein interactions, and evolutionary fitness.
Related Concept Videos
From DNA to Protein
Leaky Scanning
The Central Dogma
Multi-species Conserved Sequences
Although the genome of each species varies greatly from each other, a few sequences are highly conserved. Such conserved...
Conservation of Protein Domains Over Different Proteins
A limited set of protein domains often duplicate and recombine during evolution. These domains can be organized in different combinations to...
Transfer RNA Synthesis
Each of these chemical modifications is carried by a specific enzyme, post-transcription. All of these enzymes have unique base and site-specificity. Methylation, the most common chemical modification, is carried by at least nine different enzymes, with...

