Related papers: Codon Bias and Mutability in HIV Sequences
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…
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,…
Mutational escape from vaccine induced immune responses has thwarted the development of a successful vaccine against AIDS, whose causative agent is HIV, a highly mutable virus. Knowing the virus' fitness as a function of its proteomic…
The ratios of the codon usage in the quartets and sextets for the vertebrate series exhibit a correlated behaviour which fits naturally in the framework of the crystal basis model of the genetic code. Moreover the observed universal…
Advances in de novo synthesis of DNA and computational gene design methods make possible the customization of genes by direct manipulation of features such as codon bias and mRNA secondary structure. Codon context is another feature…
Mutation rate is a key determinant of the pace as well as outcome of evolution, and variability in this rate has been shown in different scenarios to play a key role in evolutionary adaptation and resistance evolution under stress caused by…
In population genetics, mutation rate is often treated as a homogeneous parameter across the genome. Empirical evidence, however, shows systematic variation across genomic contexts associated with chromatin organization and epigenomic…
The genetic code is the function from the set of codons to the set of amino acids by which a DNA sequence encodes proteins. Since the codons also influence the shape of the DNA molecule itself, the same sequence that encodes a protein also…
A persistent public health challenge is finding immunization schemes that are effective in combating highly mutable pathogens such as HIV and influenza viruses. To address this, we analyze a simplified model of affinity maturation, the…
In the human genomes, recombination frequency between homologous chromosomes during meiosis is highly correlated with their physical length while it differs significantly when their coding density is considered. Furthermore, it has been…
Messenger RNA encodes a sequence of amino acids by using codons. For most amino acids there are multiple synonymous codons that can encode the amino acid. The translation speed can vary from one codon to another, thus there is room for…
The GC-content is very variable in different genome regions and species but although many hypothesis we still do not know the reason why. Here we show that a relationship exists with the mutation rate, in particular we noticed a new…
Antibodies, an essential part of our immune system, develop through an intricate process to bind a wide array of pathogens. This process involves randomly mutating DNA sequences encoding these antibodies to find variants with improved…
We analyze 14,651 HIV1 reverse transcriptase (HIV RT) sequences from the Stanford HIV Drug Resistance Database labeled with treatment regimen in order to study the evolution this enzyme under drug selection in the clinic. Our goal is to…
The emergence of new variants of SARS-CoV-2 is a major concern given their potential impact on the transmissibility and pathogenicity of the virus as well as the efficacy of therapeutic interventions. Here, we predict the mutability of all…
In special coordinates (codon position--specific nucleotide frequencies) bacterial genomes form two straight lines in 9-dimensional space: one line for eubacterial genomes, another for archaeal genomes. All the 348 distinct bacterial…
The universal genetic code presents a fundamental paradox in molecular biology. Recent advances in synthetic biology have demonstrated that the code is remarkably flexible--organisms can survive with 61 codons instead of 64, natural…
A mutation in a protein-coding gene in DNA can alter the protein structure coded by the same gene. Structurally altered proteins usually lose their functions and sometimes gain an undesirable function instead. These types of mutations and…
Epistatic interactions between residues determine a protein's adaptability and shape its evolutionary trajectory. When a protein experiences a changed environment, it is under strong selection to find a peak in the new fitness landscape. It…
Important aspects of the process of information storage and retrieval in DNA and RNA, and its evolution, are the role of the anticodons and associated $t$RNA's, and correlations between anticodons and amino acids; the degeneracy of the…