The Biosynthetic Order of Amino Acid Addition to the Genetic Code

Abstract

The previously formulated model for the evolution of the genetic code was shown to clarify why base triplets of some precursor amino acids differ by a single base from product amino acid codons, while others show less homology. First, the model indicated that the direction of code evolution changed on expansion from the N-fixers code (stage 2). Growth of the code from 16 codons in the NAN column (N, any standard nucleotide) proceeded by assignment of codons in the GNN, ANN, CNN and UNN rows. Expansion phase (stage 4 to 7) precursor/product pairs that spanned this shift included aspartate/threonine, aspartate/methionine and glutamate/proline. Both 5' and mid-base differ in the codons of each of these pairs. Second, post-expansion additions (stage 9 to 14) required codon reassignment, eliminating initial correlations. Codons for the post-expansion pair, aspartate (glutamate)/arginine, also differ at both 5' and mid-base sites. Third, the distribution of core structure groups among acceptors indicated that variant tRNA specific for a sibling, rather than precursor, commonly participated as cofactors in early amino acid synthesis. Sibling pairs, rather than precursor/product pairs, then exhibit codon correlations. On removing these sources of variation, highly significant correlations emerged between codons assigned to biosynthetically related amino acids.