Virus Attenuation by Genome-Scale Changes in Codon Pair Bias -- Coleman et al. 320 (5884): 1784 -- Science
This is so cool for so many reasons.
- There are lots of synonyms in the DNA dictionary. Codons are three-nucleotide DNA sequences that code for specific proteins. There are 4 nucleotides, which implies that there are 4^3 (64) possible codons. There aren’t that many naturally occuring amino acids, so a lot of amino acids are coded for by more than one codon sequence.
- But not all synonyms are equal. Some of them just don’t work as well, because of impacts they have on the structure of the messenger RNA or for other reasons, which is reflected in their distribution in nature — the less common ones are the least well-transcribed.
- So these guys are all: if we take poliovirus and replace the effective codons with their less effective synonyms, can we create a noninfectious virus that has chemically identical proteins to an infections virus? The answer is: yes! This is potentially tremendously useful for antiviral vaccination.
- They used these guys to sequence their new DNAs. I hadn’t heard of them before but it looks pretty super badass: you punch in your desired DNA sequence over the Intarblag, and after screening the sequences for pathogenicity (!), they send you Eppendorfs of purified plasmid vector and some bacteria already expressing said plasmid. I’m pretty sure I’ve read science fiction novels about this.
Anyway. Neat! Science subscription required for article access.
