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Conservation of tandem stop codons in yeasts

BACKGROUND: It has been long thought that the stop codon in a gene is followed by another stop codon that acts as a backup if the real one is read through by a near-cognate tRNA. The existence of such 'tandem stop codons', however, remains elusive. RESULTS: Here we show that a statistical...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Liang, Han, Cavalcanti, Andre RO, Landweber, Laura F
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2005
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1088959/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15833118
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/gb-2005-6-4-r31
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author Liang, Han
Cavalcanti, Andre RO
Landweber, Laura F
author_facet Liang, Han
Cavalcanti, Andre RO
Landweber, Laura F
author_sort Liang, Han
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: It has been long thought that the stop codon in a gene is followed by another stop codon that acts as a backup if the real one is read through by a near-cognate tRNA. The existence of such 'tandem stop codons', however, remains elusive. RESULTS: Here we show that a statistical excess of stop codons has evolved at the third codon downstream of the real stop codon UAA in yeasts. Comparative analysis indicates that stop codons at this location are considerably more conserved than sense codons, suggesting that these tandem stop codons are maintained by selection. We evaluated the influence of expression levels of genes and other biological factors on the distribution of tandem stop codons. Our results suggest that expression level is an important factor influencing the presence of tandem stop codons. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrates the existence of tandem stop codons, which represent one of many meaningful genomic features that are driven by relatively weak selective forces.
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spelling pubmed-10889592005-05-05 Conservation of tandem stop codons in yeasts Liang, Han Cavalcanti, Andre RO Landweber, Laura F Genome Biol Research BACKGROUND: It has been long thought that the stop codon in a gene is followed by another stop codon that acts as a backup if the real one is read through by a near-cognate tRNA. The existence of such 'tandem stop codons', however, remains elusive. RESULTS: Here we show that a statistical excess of stop codons has evolved at the third codon downstream of the real stop codon UAA in yeasts. Comparative analysis indicates that stop codons at this location are considerably more conserved than sense codons, suggesting that these tandem stop codons are maintained by selection. We evaluated the influence of expression levels of genes and other biological factors on the distribution of tandem stop codons. Our results suggest that expression level is an important factor influencing the presence of tandem stop codons. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrates the existence of tandem stop codons, which represent one of many meaningful genomic features that are driven by relatively weak selective forces. BioMed Central 2005 2005-03-15 /pmc/articles/PMC1088959/ /pubmed/15833118 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/gb-2005-6-4-r31 Text en Copyright © 2005 Liang et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.
spellingShingle Research
Liang, Han
Cavalcanti, Andre RO
Landweber, Laura F
Conservation of tandem stop codons in yeasts
title Conservation of tandem stop codons in yeasts
title_full Conservation of tandem stop codons in yeasts
title_fullStr Conservation of tandem stop codons in yeasts
title_full_unstemmed Conservation of tandem stop codons in yeasts
title_short Conservation of tandem stop codons in yeasts
title_sort conservation of tandem stop codons in yeasts
topic Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1088959/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15833118
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/gb-2005-6-4-r31
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