ArticleJournal of molecular evolution2008
A neutral origin for error minimization in the genetic code.
Article in Journal of molecular evolution, 2008. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed, 79 citations in OpenAlex.
- The genetic code at the balance point of error and demand.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Article
- The Role of Mutations, Addition of Amino Acids, and Exchange of Genetic Information in the Coevolution of Primitive Coding Systems.International journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Self-similarity and the maximum entropy principle in the genetic code.Theory in biosciences = Theorie in den Biowissenschaften · 2023Article
- Nontriplet feature of genetic code inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- The Influence of the Selection at the Amino Acid Level on Synonymous Codon Usage from the Viewpoint of Alternative Genetic Codes.International journal of molecular sciences · 2023Article
- A crescendo of competent coding (c3) contains the Standard Genetic Code.RNA (New York, N.Y.) · 2022Article
- Model of Genetic Code Structure Evolution under Various Types of Codon Reading.International journal of molecular sciences · 2022Article
- Evolutionary Pathways and Trajectories in Antibiotic Resistance.Clinical microbiology reviews · 2021Article
- Biological factors in the synthetic construction of overlapping genes.BMC genomics · 2021Article
- Computational Analysis of Genetic Code Variations Optimized for the Robustness against Point Mutations with Wobble-like Effects.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Little Evidence the Standard Genetic Code Is Optimized for Resource Conservation.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
- On the Origin of Frameshift-Robustness of the Standard Genetic Code.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
- The Mutational Robustness of the Genetic Code and Codon Usage in Environmental Context: A Non-Extremophilic Preference?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Article
- Article
- Evolution of the Standard Genetic Code.Journal of molecular evolution · 2021Article
- Basic principles of the genetic code extension.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
- Adaptive Properties of the Genetically Encoded Amino Acid Alphabet Are Inherited from Its Subsets.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- The influence of different types of translational inaccuracies on the genetic code structure.BMC bioinformatics · 2019Article
- Genetic Code Error Minimization as a Non-Adaptive But Beneficial Trait.Journal of molecular evolution · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The genetic code has the remarkable property of error minimization, whereby the arrangement of amino acids to codons is highly efficient at reducing the deleterious effects of random point mutations and transcriptional and translational errors. Whether this property has been explicitly selected for is unclear. Here, three scenarios of genetic code evolution are examined, and their effects on error minimization assessed. First, a simple model of random stepwise addition of physicochemically similar amino acids to the code is demonstrated to result in substantial error minimization. Second, a model of random addition of physicochemically similar amino acids in a codon expansion scheme derived from the Ambiguity Reduction Model results in improved error minimization over the first model. Finally, a recently introduced 213 Model of genetic code evolution is examined by the random addition of physicochemically similar amino acids to a primordial core of four amino acids. Under certain conditions, 22% of the resulting codes produced according to the latter model possess equivalent or superior error minimization to the standard genetic code. These analyses demonstrate that a substantial proportion of error minimization is likely to have arisen neutrally, simply as a consequence of code expansion, facilitated by duplication of the genes encoding adaptor molecules and charging enzymes. This implies that selection is at best only partly responsible for the property of error minimization. These results caution against assuming that selection is responsible for every beneficial trait observed in living organisms.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.