Affiliations 

  • 1 Department of Biotechnology, Assam University, Silchar 788011, Assam, India. Electronic address: supriyoch_2008@rediffmail.com
  • 2 Department of Biotechnology, Assam University, Silchar 788011, Assam, India
  • 3 Department of Zoology, Moinul Hoque Choudhury Memorial Science College, Algapur, Hailakandi 788150, Assam, India
Virus Res, 2019 04 02;263:129-138.
PMID: 30664908 DOI: 10.1016/j.virusres.2019.01.011

Abstract

Codon usage bias (CUB) is the unequal usage of synonymous codons of an amino acid in which some codons are used more often than others and is widely used in understanding molecular biology, genetics, and functional regulation of gene expression. Nipah virus (NiV) is an emerging zoonotic paramyxovirus that causes fatal disease in both humans and animals. NiV was first identified during an outbreak of a disease in Malaysia in 1998 and then occurred periodically since 2001 in India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. We used bioinformatics tools to analyze the codon usage patterns in a genome-wide manner among 11 genomes of NiV as no work was reported yet. The compositional properties revealed that the overall GC and AT contents were 41.96 and 58.04%, respectively i.e. Nipah virus genes were AT-rich. Correlation analysis between overall nucleotide composition and its 3rd codon position suggested that both mutation pressure and natural selection might influence the CUB across Nipah genomes. Neutrality plot revealed natural selection might have played a major role while mutation pressure had a minor role in shaping the codon usage bias in NiV genomes.

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.