Analysis of the relationship between genomic GC Content and patterns of base usage, codon usage and amino acid usage in prokaryotes: similar GC content adopts similar compositional frequencies regardless of the phylogenetic lineages

PLoS One. 2014 Sep 25;9(9):e107319. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0107319. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

The GC contents of 2670 prokaryotic genomes that belong to diverse phylogenetic lineages were analyzed in this paper. These genomes had GC contents that ranged from 13.5% to 74.9%. We analyzed the distance of base frequencies at the three codon positions, codon frequencies, and amino acid compositions across genomes with respect to the differences in the GC content of these prokaryotic species. We found that although the phylogenetic lineages were remote among some species, a similar genomic GC content forced them to adopt similar base usage patterns at the three codon positions, codon usage patterns, and amino acid usage patterns. Our work demonstrates that in prokaryotic genomes: a) base usage, codon usage, and amino acid usage change with GC content with a linear correlation; b) the distance of each usage has a linear correlation with the GC content difference; and c) GC content is more essential than phylogenetic lineage in determining base usage, codon usage, and amino acid usage. This work is exceptional in that we adopted intuitively graphic methods for all analyses, and we used these analyses to examine as many as 2670 prokaryotes. We hope that this work is helpful for understanding common features in the organization of microbial genomes.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Amino Acids / genetics*
  • Base Composition*
  • Codon / genetics*
  • Genome, Archaeal / genetics*
  • Genome, Bacterial / genetics*
  • Genomics*
  • Phylogeny*

Substances

  • Amino Acids
  • Codon

Grants and funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 31470068); the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (grant number NCET-11-0059); Sichuan Youth Science and Technology Foundation of China (grant number 2014JQ0051); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of China (grant numbers ZYGX2013J100 and ZYGX2013J101); and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (grant number 2013M540705). The project was also sponsored by Scientific Research Foundation for the Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.