The fitness consequences of synonymous mutations in Escherichia coli: Experimental evidence for a pleiotropic effect of translational selection.

Codon usage bias (CUB) is a universal feature of genomes, and in most species CUB of protein coding genes is positively correlated with expression level and degree of evolutionary conservation. There is mounting experimental evidence that CUB is due in part to selection for translational efficiency and/or accuracy, i.e., translational selection. However, there is a paucity of experimental data on whether and how CUB acts in trans - does the usage of preferred codons in a highly expressed gene affect the translation of other genes by freeing up more ribosomes, thereby increasing their availability to translate all mRNA transcripts in the cell? We investigated this question by creating two extreme versions of the highly expressed Escherichia coli ß-lactamase (bla) gene, one comprised almost entirely of unpreferred codons, and a second comprised almost entirely of preferred codons. We monitored the fitness effects of these synonymous mutations over hundreds of generations in two selective environments that allowed us to disentangle translational effects acting in cis from those acting in trans. In a selective environment for maximizing translational efficiency in trans of a gene (tetA) encoding a tetracycline resistance protein, unpreferred synonymous mutations had a negative impact on long-term fitness, whereas preferred mutations had a positive impact on long-term fitness, providing strong experimental evidence for a pleiotropic effect of translational selection.

Triplet-Based Codon Organization Optimizes the Impact of Synonymous Mutation on Nucleic Acid Molecular Dynamics.

Since the elucidation of the genetic code almost 50 years ago, many nonrandom aspects of its codon organization remain only partly resolved. Here, we investigate the recent hypothesis of 'dual-use' codons which proposes that in addition to allowing adjustment of codon optimization to tRNA abundance, the degeneracy in the triplet-based genetic code also multiplexes information regarding DNA's helical shape and protein-binding dynamics while avoiding interference with other protein-level characteristics determined by amino acid properties. How such structural optimization of the code within eukaryotic chromatin could have arisen from an RNA world is a mystery, but would imply some preadaptation in an RNA context. We analyzed synonymous (protein-silent) and nonsynonymous (protein-altering) mutational impacts on molecular dynamics in 13823 identically degenerate alternative codon reorganizations, defined by codon transitions in 7680 GPU-accelerated molecular dynamic simulations of implicitly and explicitly solvated double-stranded aRNA and bDNA structures. When compared to all possible alternative codon assignments, the standard genetic code minimized the impact of synonymous mutations on the random atomic fluctuations and correlations of carbon backbone vector trajectories while facilitating the specific movements that contribute to DNA polymer flexibility. This trend was notably stronger in the context of RNA supporting the idea that dual-use codon optimization and informational multiplexing in DNA resulted from the preadaptation of the RNA duplex to resist changes to thermostability. The nonrandom and divergent molecular dynamics of synonymous mutations also imply that the triplet-based code may have resulted from adaptive functional expansion enabling a primordial doublet code to multiplex gene regulatory information via the shape and charge of the minor groove.

Corynebacterium glutamicum ATP-phosphoribosyl transferases suitable for L-histidine production--Strategies for the elimination of feedback inhibition.

L-Histidine biosynthesis in Corynebacterium glutamicum is mainly regulated by L-histidine feedback inhibition of the ATP-phosphoribosyltransferase HisG that catalyzes the first step of the pathway. The elimination of this feedback inhibition is the first and most important step in the development of an L-histidine production strain. For this purpose, a combined approach of random mutagenesis and rational enzyme redesign was performed. Mutants spontaneously resistant to the toxic L-histidine analog ß-(2-thiazolyl)-DL-alanine (2-TA) revealed novel and unpredicted mutations in the C-terminal regulatory domain of HisG resulting in increased feedback resistance. Moreover, deletion of the entire C-terminal regulatory domain in combination with the gain of function mutation S143F in the catalytic domain resulted in a HisG variant that is still highly active even at L-histidine concentrations close to the solubility limit. Notably, the S143F mutation on its own provokes feedback deregulation, revealing for the first time an amino acid residue in the catalytic domain of HisG that is involved in the feedback regulatory mechanism. In addition, we investigated the effect of hisG mutations for L-histidine production on different levels. This comprised the analysis of different expression systems, including plasmid- and chromosome-based overexpression, as well as the importance of codon choice for HisG mutations. The combination of domain deletions, single amino acid exchanges, codon choice, and chromosome-based overexpression resulted in production strains accumulating around 0.5 g l(-1) L-histidine, demonstrating the added value of the different approaches.