Codon Bias and Mutability in HIV Sequences

A survey of the patterns of synonymous codon preferences in the HIV env gene reveals a relation between the codon bias and the mutability requirements in different regions in the protein. At hypervariable regions in $gp120$, one finds a greater proportion of codons that tend to mutate non-synonymously, but to a target that is similar in hydrophobicity and volume. We argue that this strategy results from a compromise between the selective pressure placed on the virus by the induced immune response, which favours amino acid substitutions in the complementarity determining regions, and the negative selection against missense mutations that violate structural constraints of the env protein.