title: Error minimization explains the codon usage of highly expressed genes in Escherichia coli.
abstract: Different organisms use synonymous codons with different preferences. Several measures have been introduced to compute the extent of codon usage bias within a gene or genome, among which the codon adaptation index (CAI) has been shown to be well correlated with mRNA levels of Escherichia coli. In this work an error adaptation index (eAI) is introduced, which estimates the level at which a gene can tolerate the effects of mistranslations. It is shown that the eAI has a strong correlation with CAI, as well as with mRNA levels, which suggests that the codons of highly expressed genes are selected so that mistranslation would have the minimum possible effect on the structure and function of the related proteins.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biotechnology, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran. shateri@khayam.ut.ac.ir
authors.forename: Hamed Shateri
authors.initials: HS
authors.lastname: Najafabadi
authors.forename: Jean
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lehmann
authors.forename: Mohammad
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Omidi
mesh_terms: D001482:Base Composition; D003062:Codon / Q000235:genetics*; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000235:genetics*; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D005815:Genetic Code / Q000235:genetics*; D008957:Models, Genetic; D014158:Transcription, Genetic / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D003062:Codon