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Cited by 310

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 76 of the 76 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Balanced Codon Usage Optimizes Eukaryotic Translational Efficiency

Open access
Qian, Wenfeng, Yang, Jian-Rong, Pearson, Nathaniel M., Maclean, Calum, Zhang, Jianzhi·2012·PLoS Genetics

Abstract

Cellular efficiency in protein translation is an important fitness determinant in rapidly growing organisms. It is widely believed that synonymous codons are translated with unequal speeds and that translational efficiency is maximized by the exclusive use of rapidly translated codons. Here we estimate the in vivo translational speeds of all sense codons from the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Surprisingly, preferentially used codons are not translated faster than unpreferred ones. We hypothesize that this phenomenon is a result of codon usage in proportion to cognate tRNA concentrations, the optimal strategy in enhancing translational efficiency under tRNA shortage. Our predicted codon-tRNA balance is indeed observed from all model eukaryotes examined, and its impact on translational efficiency is further validated experimentally. Our study reveals a previously unsuspected mechanism by which unequal codon usage increases translational efficiency, demonstrates widespread natural selection for translational efficiency, and offers new strategies to improve synthetic biology.

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Metadata

Authors
Qian, W., Yang, J.-R., Pearson, N. M., Maclean, C., & Zhang, J.
Venue
PLoS Genetics
Published
2012-03-29
Volume
8
Issue
3
Pages
e1002603
ISSN
  • 1553-7390 (ISSN-L)
  • 1553-7404
OpenAlex
W1974394989
Cited by
310
References
76
FWCI
11.97
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
gold

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Balanced Codon Usage Optimizes Eukaryotic Translational Efficiency. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1371/journal.pgen.1002603
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Qian, W., Yang, J.-R., Pearson, N. M., Maclean, C., & Zhang, J. (2012). Balanced Codon Usage Optimizes Eukaryotic Translational Efficiency. PLoS Genetics. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgen.1002603

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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