title: Translational effects of differential codon usage among intragenic domains of new genes in Drosophila.
abstract: Evolved codon usages often pose a technical challenge over the expressing of eukaryotic genes in microbial systems because of changed translational machinery. In the present study, we investigated the translational effects of intragenic differential codon usage on the expression of the new Drosophila gene, jingwei (jgw), a chimera derived from two unrelated parental genes: Ymp and Adh. We found that jgw possesses a strong intragenic differential usage of synonymous codons, i.e. the Adh-derived C-domain has a significantly higher codon bias than that of the Ymp-derived N-domain (P=0.0023 by t-test). Additional evolutionary analysis revealed the heterogeneous distribution of rare codons, implicating its role in gene regulation and protein translation. The in vitro expression of jgw further demonstrated that the heterogeneous distribution of rare codons has played a role in regulating gene expression, particularly, affecting the quality of protein translation.
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolution, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
authors.forename: Jianming
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Manyuan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Long
authors.forename: Liming
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D000426:Alcohol Dehydrogenase / Q000378:metabolism; D000818:Animals; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D003062:Codon / Q000235:genetics*; D004330:Drosophila / Q000235:genetics*; D029721:Drosophila Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D040461:Gene Components; D015971:Gene Expression Regulation, Enzymologic / Q000235:genetics*; D005982:Glutathione Transferase / Q000235:genetics; D050506:Mutant Chimeric Proteins; D010957:Plasmids / Q000235:genetics; D014176:Protein Biosynthesis / Q000235:genetics*; D017434:Protein Structure, Tertiary; D011993:Recombinant Fusion Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D003062:Codon; D029721:Drosophila Proteins; C400504:Jingwei protein, Drosophila; D050506:Mutant Chimeric Proteins; D011993:Recombinant Fusion Proteins; D000426:Alcohol Dehydrogenase; D005982:Glutathione Transferase