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. 2007 Jul 25;2007(1):61374. doi: 10.1155/2007/61374

Variation in the Correlation of G + C Composition with Synonymous Codon Usage Bias among Bacteria

Haruo Suzuki 1, Rintaro Saito 1,✉, Masaru Tomita 1
PMCID: PMC3171346  PMID: 18350114

Abstract

G + C composition at the third codon position (GC3) is widely reported to be correlated with synonymous codon usage bias. However, no quantitative attempt has been made to compare the extent of this correlation among different genomes. Here, we applied Shannon entropy from information theory to measure the degree of GC3 bias and that of synonymous codon usage bias of each gene. The strength of the correlation of GC3 with synonymous codon usage bias, quantified by a correlation coefficient, varied widely among bacterial genomes, ranging from Inline graphic0.07 to 0.95. Previous analyses suggesting that the relationship between GC3 and synonymous codon usage bias is independent of species are thus inconsistent with the more detailed analyses obtained here for individual species.

[1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23]

Contributor Information

Haruo Suzuki, Email: hsuzuki@uidaho.edu.

Rintaro Saito, Email: rsaito@sfc.keio.ac.jp.

Masaru Tomita, Email: mt@sfc.keio.ac.jp.

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