Human viruses have codon usage biases that match highly expressed proteins in the tissues they infect
Authors: Justin Miller, Ariel Hippen, Sage Wright, Caroline Morris, Perry Ridge
Biomedical Genetics and Genomics
July, 2017
1 Conference Paper Citation
Novelty of Approach
-Most exhaustive comparison of codon usage biases between humans and human-infecting viruses
-Compared viral codon usages with codon usages in proteins that are expressed in tissues the viruses
infect
Results
-7,052,621 pairwise comparisons of human genes versus 113 viruses that infect humans
-16 viruses averaged a significant correlation in codon usage with over 500 human genes per viral gene
-58 viruses were highly correlated with an average of at least 100 human genes per viral gene
-37 viruses were significantly correlated with an average of at least one human gene per viral gene
-2 viruses not highly correlated with an average of at least one human gene per viral gene.
-Alpha level of 7.09 × 10-9 (0.05 alpha / 7,052,621 comparisons)
Implications
-Results suggest herpesvirus is able to co-opt the translational apparatus of the infected cell by closely matching codon usage biases.
-Viruses that do not match codon usage biases are rarer in human populations
-Potentially predict tissues that a virus will infect based on sequence
Correlation Between Codon Usage Biases