Synonymous codons influencing gene expression in organisms

Abstract:

Nowadays, it is beyond doubt that synonymous codons are not the same with respect to expression of a gene. In favor of this, ribosome profiling experiments in vivo and in vitro have suggested that ribosome occupancy time is not the same for different synonymous codons. Therefore, synonymous codons influence differently the speed of translation elongation, which guides further cotranslational folding kinetics of a protein. It is now realized that the position of each codon in a coding sequence is important. The effect of synonymous codons on protein structure is an exciting field of research nowadays. This review discusses the recent developments in this field.

Keywords::

• codon usage bias
• synonymous codons
• ribosome profiling
• cotranslational protein folding
• protein structure

Acknowledgments

RB and SKR are grateful to the Department of Biotechnology, India, for funding our collaborative project under DBT-NE Twinning Project (DBT-Twinning NER Project No BT/511/NE/TBP/2013). We are also grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.