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. 2022 Oct 17;60(11):1106–1112. doi: 10.1007/s12275-022-2371-x

Hepatitis B virus (HBV) codon adapts well to the gene expression profile of liver cancer: an evolutionary explanation for HBV’s oncogenic role

Chunpeng Yu 1, Jian Li 1, Qun Li 1, Shuai Chang 1, Yufeng Cao 2, Hui Jiang 2, Lingling Xie 1, Gang Fan 3, Song Wang 1,✉
PMCID: PMC9574796  PMID: 36251120

Abstract

Due to the evolutionary arms race between hosts and viruses, viruses must adapt to host translation systems to rapidly synthesize viral proteins. Highly expressed genes in hosts have a codon bias related to tRNA abundance, the primary RNA translation rate determinant. We calculated the relative synonymous codon usage (RSCU) of three hepatitis viruses (HAV, HBV, and HCV), SARS-CoV-2, 30 human tissues, and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). After comparing RSCU between viruses and human tissues, we calculated the codon adaptation index (CAI) of viral and human genes. HBV and HCV showed the highest correlations with HCC and the normal liver, while SARS-CoV-2 had the strongest association with lungs. In addition, based on HCC RSCU, the CAI of HBV and HCV genes was the highest. HBV and HCV preferentially adapt to the tRNA pool in HCC, facilitating viral RNA translation. After an initial trigger, rapid HBV/HCV translation and replication may change normal liver cells into HCC cells. Our findings reveal a novel perspective on virus-mediated oncogenesis.

Keywords: hepatitis viruses, evolutionary arms race, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), relative synonymous codon usage (RSCU), codon adaptation index (CAI)

Acknowledgements

We thank the Wiley Editing Service for language editing. No funding has supported this study.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization: S.W.

Supervision: S.W.

Methodology: C.Y., J.L., Q.L., S.C., Y.C., H.J., L.X., and G.F.

Writing — original draft preparation: S.W.

Writing — review and editing: S.W.

All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Data Availability

All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper.

Ethical Statement

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.

Footnotes

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Associated Data

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Data Availability Statement

All data needed to evaluate the conclusions in the paper are present in the paper.

Articles from Journal of Microbiology (Seoul, Korea) are provided here courtesy of Nature Publishing Group

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