Abstract
Codon usage bias has been shown to be correlated with gene expression levels in many organisms, including the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans. Here, the codon usage (cu) characteristics for a set of currently available β-tubulin coding sequences of helminths were assessed by calculating several indices, including the effective codon number (Nc), the intrinsic codon deviation index (ICDI), the P2 value and the mutational response index (MRI). The P2 value gives a measure of translational pressure, which has been shown to be correlated to high gene expression levels in some organisms, but it has not yet been analysed in that respect in helminths. For all but two of the C. elegans β-tubulin coding sequences investigated, the P2 value was the only index that indicated the presence of codon usage bias. Therefore, we propose that in general the helminth β-tubulin sequences investigated here are not expressed at high levels.
Furthermore, we calculated the correlation coefficients for the cu patterns of the helminth β-tubulin sequences compared with those of highly expressed genes in organisms such as Escherichia coli and C. elegans. It was found that β-tubulin cu patterns for all sequences of members of the Strongylida were significantly correlated to those for highly expressed C. elegans genes. This approach provides a new measure for comparing the adaptation of cu of a particular coding sequence with that of highly expressed genes in possible expression systems.
Finally, using the cu patterns of the sequences studied, a phylogenetic tree was constructed. The topology of this tree was very much in concordance with that of a phylogeny based on small subunit ribosomal DNA sequence alignments.
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The authors are grateful to R.B. Gasser and W. Blackhall for helpful comments on the draft manuscript.
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von Samson-Himmelstjerna, G., Harder, A., Failing, K. et al. Analysis of codon usage in β-tubulin sequences of helminths. Parasitol Res 90, 294–300 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-003-0840-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00436-003-0840-7