title: Analysis of oligonucleotide AUG start codon context in eukariotic mRNAs.
abstract: The AUG start codon context features have been investigated by analyzing eukaryotic mRNAs belonging to various taxonomic groups. The functional relevance of each specific position surrounding the AUG start codon has been established as a function of the measured shift between base composition observed at that particular position, and base composition averaged over all the 5'untranslated regions. A more detailed analysis carried out on human genes belonging to different isochores showed significant isochore-specific fea-tures that cannot be explained only by a mutational bias effect. The most represented heptamers spanning from position -3 to +4 with respect to the initiator AUG have been determined for mRNAs belonging to different taxonomic groups and a web page utility has been set up (http://bigarea.area.ba.cnr.it:8000/BioWWW/ATG.html) to determine the relative abundance of a user submitted oligonucleotide context in a given species or taxon.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Fisiologia e Biochimica Generali, Università di Milano, Via Celoria 26, 20133, Milan, Italy. graziano.pesole@unimi.it
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pesole
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gissi
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Grillo
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Licciulli
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Liuni
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Saccone
mesh_terms: D020121:5' Untranslated Regions / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism; D000818:Animals; D001482:Base Composition; D001483:Base Sequence; D001665:Binding Sites; D018387:Codon, Initiator / Q000235:genetics*; D004247:DNA / Q000235:genetics; D016208:Databases, Factual; D005057:Eukaryotic Cells / Q000378:metabolism*; D005796:Genes / Q000235:genetics; D015894:Genome, Human; D006801:Humans; D016366:Open Reading Frames / Q000235:genetics; D012333:RNA, Messenger / Q000235:genetics*; D012270:Ribosomes / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D020121:5' Untranslated Regions; D018387:Codon, Initiator; D012333:RNA, Messenger; D004247:DNA