Related papers: Codon Bias and Mutability in HIV Sequences
Recent experiments and simulations have demonstrated that proteins can fold on the ribosome. However, the extent and generality of fitness effects resulting from co-translational folding remain open questions. Here we report a genome-wide…
Motivated by recent experiments on an antibiotic resistance gene, we investigate genetic interactions between synonymous mutations in the framework of exclusion models of translation. We show that the range of possible interactions is…
The origin of the unusual incubation period distribution in the development of AIDS is largely unresolved. A key factor in understanding the observed distribution of latency periods, as well as the occurrence of infected individuals not…
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…
Spatial environmental variation can either amplify or suppress the fixation of beneficial mutants in structured populations, yet the interplay of ecological factors and spatial structure in determining which outcome occurs remains…
The present work is devoted to describe a set of rules explaining the discriminating versus non-discriminating behavior of the di-basic stages and to characterize the role of each base in determining such a behavior. Bases are analyze as…
Count data, for example the number of observed cases of a disease in a city, often arise in the fields of healthcare analytics and epidemiology. In this paper, we consider performing regression on multivariate data in which our outcome is a…
Recent clinical studies have shown that HIV disease pathogenesis can depend strongly on many factors at the time of transmission, including the strength of the initial viral load and the local availability of CD4+ T-cells. In this article,…
BACKGROUND: An important question is whether evolution favors properties such as mutational robustness or evolvability that do not directly benefit any individual, but can influence the course of future evolution. Functionally similar…
Supplemental data for "Stochastic Gene Expression in a Lentiviral Positive Feedback Loop: HIV-1 Tat Fluctuations Drive Phenotypic Diversity" [q-bio.MN/0608002, Cell. 2005 Jul 29;122(2):169-82].
Studies of coevolution of amino acids within and between proteins have revealed two types of coevolving units: coevolving contacts, which are pairs of amino acids distant along the sequence but in contact in the three-dimensional structure,…
A series of studies have revealed the among-population components of genetic variation are higher for the paternal Y chromosome than for the maternal mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), which indicates sex-biased migrations in human populations.…
The usage frequencies for codons belonging to quartets are analized, over the whole exonic region, for 92 biological species. Correlation is put into evidence, between the usage frequencies of synonymous codons with third nucleotide A and C…
Based on a recent model of evolving viruses competing with an adapting immune system [1], we study the conditions under which a viral quasispecies can maximize its growth rate. The range of mutation rates that allows viruses to thrive is…
Somatic mutations in cancer cells affect various genomic elements disrupting important cell functions. In particular, mutations in DNA binding sites recognized by transcription factors can alter regulator binding affinities and expression…
The ratio of non-synonymous to synonymous substitutions $\omega(=d_{N}/d_{S})$ has been widely used as a measure of adaptive evolution in protein coding genes. Omega can be defined in terms of population genetics parameters as the fixation…
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…
A central challenge in Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) public health policy lies in determining whether to universally expand treatment access, despite the risk of sub-optimal adherence and consequent drug resistance, or to adopt a more…
Conformational changes upon protein-protein association are the key element of the binding mechanism. The study presents a systematic large-scale analysis of such conformational changes in the side chains. The results indicate that short…
During an infection, HIV experiences strong selection by immune system T cells. Recent experimental work has shown that MHC escape mutations form an important pathway for HIV to avoid such selection. In this paper, we study a model of MHC…