Related papers: The Genetic Code Paradox: Extreme Conservation Des…
The origin and organizing principles of the genetic code remain fundamental puzzles in life science. The vanishingly low probability of the natural codon-to-amino acid mapping arising by chance has spurred the hypothesis that its structure…
The genetic code is nearly universal, and the arrangement of the codons in the standard codon table is highly non-random. The three main concepts on origin and evolution of the code are the stereochemical theory; the coevolution theory; and…
The genetic code refers to a rule that maps 64 codons to 20 amino acids. Nearly all organisms, with few exceptions, share the same genetic code, the standard genetic code (SGC). While it remains unclear why this universal code has arisen…
Background: There is a 3-fold redundancy in the Genetic Code; most amino acids are encoded by more than one codon. These synonymous codons are not used equally; there is a Codon Usage Bias (CUB). This article will provide novel information…
A representation of the genetic code as a six-dimensional Boolean hypercube is proposed. It is assumed here that this structure is the result of the hierarchical order of the interaction energies of the bases in codon-anticodon recognition.…
How robust is the natural genetic code with respect to mistranslation errors? It has long been known that the genetic code is very efficient in limiting the effect of point mutation. A misread codon will commonly code either for the same…
Why is the genetic code the way it is? The most successful theory states that the codon assignments minimise the effects of errors arising in primordial living systems. Here a transversion is reported that leaves invariant degeneracy in the…
The genetic code maps the sixty-four nucleotide triplets (codons) to twenty amino-acids. Some argue that the specific form of the code with its twenty amino-acids might be a 'frozen accident' because of the overwhelming effects of any…
Complex systems with tightly coadapted parts frequently appear in living systems and are difficult to account for through Darwinian evolution, that is random variation and natural selection, if the constituent parts are independently coded…
Degeneracy is a salient feature of genetic codes, because there are more codons than amino acids. The conventional table for genetic codes suffers from an inability of illustrating a symmetrical nature among genetic base codes. In fact,…
The standard genetic code is known to be robust to translation errors and point mutations. We studied how small modifications of the standard code affect its robustness. The robustness was assessed in terms of a proper stability function,…
The genetic code maps the sixty-four nucleotide triplets (codons) to twenty amino-acids. While the biochemical details of this code were unraveled long ago, its origin is still obscure. We review information-theoretic approaches to the…
Adaptation to changing environments is a hallmark of biological systems. Diversity in traits is necessary for adaptation and can influence the survival of a population faced with novelty. In habitats that remain stable over many…
The genetic code markup is the assignment of stop codons. The standard genetic code markup ensures the maximum possible stability of genetic information with respect to two fault classes: frameshift and nonsense mutations. There are only…
Rich information on the prebiotic evolution is still stored in contemporary genomic data. The statistical mechanism at the sequence level may play a significant role in the prebiotic evolution. Based on statistical analysis of genome…
Degeneracy of the genetic code is a biological way to minimize effects of the undesirable mutation changes. Degeneration has a natural description on the 5-adic space of 64 codons $\mathcal{C}_5 (64) = \{n_0 + n_1 5 + n_2 5^2 : n_i = 1, 2,…
Many modified genetic codes are found in specific genomes in which one or more codons have been reassigned to a different amino acid from that in the canonical code. We present a model that unifies four possible mechanisms for reassignment,…
The standard genetic code is known to be much more efficient in minimizing adverse effects of misreading errors and one-point mutations in comparison with a random code having the same structure, i.e. the same number of codons coding for…
It has been proposed that the degeneracy of the genetic code,i.e., the phenomenon that different codons (base triplets) of DNA are transcribed into the same amino acid, may be interpreted as the result of a symmetry breaking process. In the…
The evolution in coding DNA sequences brings new flexibility and freedom to the codon words, even as the underlying nucleotides get significantly ordered. These curious contra-rules of gene organisation are observed from the distribution of…