The genetic code is nearly optimal for allowing additional information within protein-coding sequences.

By Shalev Itzkovitz, Uri Alon. 2007

231 citations recorded by the source corpus.

DNA sequences that code for proteins need to convey, in addition to the protein-coding information, several different signals at the same time. These "parallel codes" include binding sequences for regulatory and structural proteins, signals for splicing, and RNA secondary structure. Here, we show that the universal genetic code can efficiently carry arbitrary parallel codes much better than the vast majority of other possible genetic codes. This property is related to the identity of the stop codons. We find that the ability to support parallel codes is strongly tied to another useful property of the genetic code--minimization of the effects of frame-shift translation errors. Whereas many of the known regulatory codes reside in nontranslated regions of the genome, the present findings suggest that protein-coding regions can readily carry abundant additional information.

Subfields: Genetics, Molecular Biology

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Citations in the corpus

Origin and evolution of the genetic code: the universal enigma (2008, background): “optimality for allowing additional information within protein coding sequences (19).”
A search for conserved sequences in coding regions reveals that the let-7 microRNA targets Dicer within its coding sequence (2008, background): “Further, the potential importance of sites embedded within the coding sequence of genes is supported by the nature of the genetic code itself, which has been shown to be nearly optimal for conveying information in parallel to the amino acid sequence (13).”