title: Synonymous but not the same: the causes and consequences of codon bias.
abstract: Despite their name, synonymous mutations have significant consequences for cellular processes in all taxa. As a result, an understanding of codon bias is central to fields as diverse as molecular evolution and biotechnology. Although recent advances in sequencing and synthetic biology have helped to resolve longstanding questions about codon bias, they have also uncovered striking patterns that suggest new hypotheses about protein synthesis. Ongoing work to quantify the dynamics of initiation and elongation is as important for understanding natural synonymous variation as it is for designing transgenes in applied contexts.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology and Program in Applied Mathematics and Computational Science, University of Pennsylvania, 433 South University Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA. jplotkin@sas.upenn.edu
authors.forename: Joshua B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Plotkin
authors.forename: Grzegorz
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Kudla
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D003062:Codon / Q000235:genetics*; D029721:Drosophila Proteins / Q000235:genetics; D015870:Gene Expression; D016678:Genome; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D009154:Mutation; D014176:Protein Biosynthesis
chemical_list: D003062:Codon; D029721:Drosophila Proteins