ArticleMolecular biology and evolution2021
Little Evidence the Standard Genetic Code Is Optimized for Resource Conservation.
Article in Molecular biology and evolution, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 7 citations in OpenAlex.
- Design of overlapping genes using deep generative models of protein sequences.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Rare-event sampling analysis uncovers the fitness landscape of the genetic code.PLoS computational biology · 2023Article
- Is the Genetic Code Optimized for Resource Conservation?Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Selection for resource conservation can shape the coding sequences of organisms living in nutrient-limited environments. Recently, it was proposed that selection for resource conservation, specifically for nitrogen and carbon content, has also shaped the structure of the standard genetic code, such that the missense mutations the code allows tend to cause small increases in the number of nitrogen and carbon atoms in amino acids. Moreover, it was proposed that this optimization is not confounded by known optimizations of the standard genetic code, such as for polar requirement or hydropathy. We challenge these claims. We show the proposed optimization for nitrogen conservation is highly sensitive to choice of null model and the proposed optimization for carbon conservation is confounded by the known conservative nature of the standard genetic code with respect to the molecular volume of amino acids. There is therefore little evidence the standard genetic code is optimized for resource conservation. We discuss our findings in the context of null models of the standard genetic code.
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