The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Codon catalog usage and the genome hypothesis
Open accessAbstract
Frequencies for each of the 61 amino acid codons have been determined in every published mRNA sequence of 50 or more codons. The frequencies are shown for each kind of genome and for each individual gene. A surprising consistency of choices exists among genes of the same or similar genomes. Thus each genome, or kind of genome, appears to possess a "system" for choosing between codons. Frameshift genes, however, have widely different choice strategies from normal genes. Our work indicates that the main factors distinguishing between mRNA sequences relate to choices among degenerate bases. These systematic third base choices can therefore be used to establish a new kind of genetic distance, which reflects differences in coding strategy. The choice patterns we find seem compatible with the idea that the genome and not the individual gene is the unit of selection. Each gene in a genome tends to conform to its species' usage of the codon catalog; this is our genome hypothesis.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Horizontal gene transfer in prokaryotes: Quantification and classification
Koonin, E. V., Makarova, K. S., & Aravind, L. (2001) · Annual Review of Microbiology · doi:10.1146/annurev.micro.55.1.709 · Cited by 1,126
Codon catalog usage is a genome strategy modulated for gene expressivity
Grantham, R., Gautier, C., Gouy, M., Jacobzone, M., & Mercier, R. (1981) · Nucleic Acids Research · doi:10.1093/nar/9.1.213-b · Cited by 939
Self-citationSynonymous codon usage in Drosophila melanogaster: Natural selection and translational accuracy
Akashi, H. (1994) · Genetics · doi:10.1093/genetics/136.3.927 · Cited by 742
Sharp, P. M., Cowe, E., Higgins, D. G., Shields, D. C., Wolfe, K. H., & Wright, F. (1988) · Nucleic Acids Research · doi:10.1093/nar/16.17.8207 · Cited by 594
Codon preference and its use in identifying protein coding regions in long DNA sequences
Staden, R., & McLachian, A. D. (1982) · Nucleic Acids Research · doi:10.1093/nar/10.1.141 · Cited by 462
Metadata
- Authors
- Grantham, R., Gautier, C., Gouy, M., Mercier, R., & Pavé, A.
- Venue
- Nucleic Acids Research
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 1980
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 197-197
- ISSN
- 0305-1048 (ISSN-L)
- 1362-4962
- OpenAlex
- W2072284352
- Cited by
- 800
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 5.23
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Codon catalog usage and the genome hypothesis. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1093/nar/8.1.197-c
- The paper
- Grantham, R., Gautier, C., Gouy, M., Mercier, R., & Pavé, A. (1980). Codon catalog usage and the genome hypothesis. Nucleic Acids Research. https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/8.1.197-c
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
