linkedin post 2018-12-15 06:28:47

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ORIGIN INSIGHTS. “The nature of these non-canonical codes, as well as their distribution on the tree of life, give us a few insights into how translation may have originated, deep differences between translation systems in use today, and what forces keep the code so conserved.” https://lnkd.in/d87ZWbH View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-12-15 06:31:37

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PARASITE VARIANT. “The latest such variant, discovered in a trypanosomatid (protist) symbiont of an insect by fossicking through symbiont sequences ‘contaminating’ the insect’s transcriptome. This non-canonical code is not only new and different, but also special because it may provide a glimpse into the intermediate stages of one of the rarest of changes in biology.” https://lnkd.in/d87ZWbH View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-12-15 06:34:18

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THE GREAT MISHMASH. “The ‘frozen accident’, as it was described by Crick, that ultimately emerged is certainly non-random, but is more of a mishmash than an elegant plan, which led to new ideas about how the code may have evolved in a series of steps from simpler codes with fewer amino acids.” https://lnkd.in/d87ZWbH View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-12-15 06:36:55

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FROZEN FORMAT. “So the code was not always thus, but once it was established before the last universal common ancestor of all extant life it has remained under very powerful selective constraints that kept the code frozen in nearly all genomes that subsequently diversified.” https://lnkd.in/d87ZWbH View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-12-15 06:39:50

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EXCEPTIONAL GROUP. “Variations in prokaryotic genomes are rare except in the proteobacteria-derived genomes of mitochondria, where the universal code is almost never used. This contrasts with almost no known changes in the cyanobacteria-derived plastids, which may reflect deeper differences in the way mitochondrial genomes evolve, perhaps rooted in a high rate of substitution.” https://lnkd.in/d87ZWbH View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-12-15 06:42:19

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MORE VARIANT CASES. “In nuclear genomes, variants are also rare, but as protist genome diversity is explored the number of cases is expanding. One interesting pattern to emerge is that the frequency of different kinds of changes in nuclear genomes is different from those of mitochondria and bacteria (the most obvious being the prevalence of UAR=Q versus UGA=W, respectively). Once again, this likely reflects a fundamental difference in their genomes, in this case the underlying translation systems (amino acyl tRNA syntheses and termination factors).” https://lnkd.in/d87ZWbH View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-12-15 06:49:48

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RARE EVENTS. “This may be a true reflection of natural diversity of the code, because stop codons are by definition rare (only one of three possibilities appearing per gene, whereas even rare amino acids are typically found many times) and the fidelity of termination is potentially less critical than other possible changes.” https://lnkd.in/d87ZWbH View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2018-12-16 04:32:54

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VARIANT INFERENCE. “These characteristics may render such changes more statistically probable, less likely to be deleterious, or both. However, most non-canonical genetic codes are inferred from DNA sequence alone, or occasionally DNA sequences and corresponding tRNAs.” https://lnkd.in/d87ZWbH View in LinkedIn
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