ArticleGenetics1994
Synonymous codon usage in Drosophila melanogaster: natural selection and translational accuracy.
Article in Genetics, 1994. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 367 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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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
367 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Synonymous but Not Silent: The Codon Usage Code for Gene Expression and Protein Folding.Annual review of biochemistry · 2021Pooled it
- Genomic Codon Usage is Structurally Consistent with First-Classness Across the Tree of Life.Journal of molecular evolution · 2026Article
- Comparative Analysis of Codon Usage Patterns in Chloroplast Genomes of Maple (Genus Acer).Biochemical genetics · 2026Article
- Estimating the evolutionary fitness of specific synonymous codon changes.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- From Codons to Protein Structure: Evolutionary Constraints of Mitochondrial Proteins in Corvides.Biology · 2026Article
- Synonymous mutations in essential genes infrequently produce fitness effects in human cell lines.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- Translation accuracy in E. coli.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- The importance of nonsense errors: Estimating the rates and implications of ribosome drop-off during protein synthesis.PLoS genetics · 2026Article
- Mitochondrial Genome ofAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Hierarchical evolution of the proteobacterial essential chaperone SecB reveals non-neutral synonymous evolution under extreme purifying selection.Molecular genetics and genomics : MGG · 2026Article
- Estimating the evolutionary fitness of specific synonymous codon changes.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Mistranslation suppresses mistranscription in eukaryotes.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Characteristics of the mitochondrial genome of the invasive plant Tagetes minuta (Asteraceae) on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and its evolutionary significance.BMC genomics · 2026Article
- Synonymous but not silent: functional codon bias reveals decoupled mitonuclear evolution in parasitic worms.Bioinformatics advances · 2026Article
- Sex-biased duplicates are rapidly generated duringbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Functional synonymous mutations and their evolutionary consequences.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2025Review
- Assembly and comparative analysis of the first complete mitochondrial genome of Camellia sinensis var. assamica 'Hainan Dayezhong', endemic to Hainan Province, China.BMC plant biology · 2025Article
- Translational fidelity and longevity are genetically linked.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Lost in translation: conserved amino acid usage despite extreme codon bias in foraminifera.mBio · 2025Article
- A New Comparative Framework for Estimating Selection on Synonymous Substitutions.Molecular biology and evolution · 2025Article
307 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
I present evidence that natural selection biases synonymous codon usage to enhance the accuracy of protein synthesis in Drosophila melanogaster. Since the fitness cost of a translational misincorporation will depend on how the amino acid substitution affects protein function, selection for translational accuracy predicts an association between codon usage in DNA and functional constraint at the protein level. The frequency of preferred codons is significantly higher at codons conserved for amino acids than at nonconserved codons in 38 genes compared between D. melanogaster and Drosophila virilis or Drosophila pseudoobscura (Z = 5.93, P < 10(-6)). Preferred codon usage is also significantly higher in putative zinc-finger and homeodomain regions than in the rest of 28 D. melanogaster transcription factor encoding genes (Z = 8.38, P < 10(-6)). Mutational alternatives (within-gene differences in mutation rates, amino acid changes altering codon preference states, and doublet mutations at adjacent bases) do not appear to explain this association between synonymous codon usage and amino acid constraint.
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Registered trials
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.