Crammed, ambiguous genetic codes

In most nuclear genomes the genetic code appears frozen and largely unambiguous. For unknown reasons, among all eukaryotes, ciliates demonstrate a proclivity for reassigning the standard nuclear stop codons to amino acids, with seven variant genetic codes, including three new ones reported here. The key question is therefore: why is the nuclear genetic code so exceedingly stable in most eukaryotes, but not in ciliates? In ciliates, we have discovered the most sophisticated nuclear genetic codes, which paradoxically translate all 64 codons as standard amino acids, and recognize either one or all three stop codons. "Stop" codon depletion shortly before coding sequence ends suggests mRNA 3' ends are involved in stop/sense disambiguation. We propose that, together with stop codon depletion, ambiguity tolerance, including during stop codon readthrough, has enabled repeated genetic code diversification. Please note that the C. magnum genome assembly contains sequences both ciliate and resident bacterial sequences.

Identifier
Source https://data.blue-cloud.org/search-details?step=~012599BD1EA76D034A9AB728C287C33D661D8EC4B5C
Metadata Access https://data.blue-cloud.org/api/collections/599BD1EA76D034A9AB728C287C33D661D8EC4B5C
Provenance
Instrument Illumina HiSeq 2500; Illumina HiSeq 2000; ILLUMINA
Publisher Blue-Cloud Data Discovery & Access service; ELIXIR-ENA
Publication Year 2024
OpenAccess true
Contact blue-cloud-support(at)maris.nl
Representation
Discipline Marine Science
Temporal Coverage Begin 2015-06-05T00:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2016-02-23T00:00:00Z