Gender-specific selection on codon usage in plant genomes

Abstract

This study reports gender-specific bias in codon usage in plants. The findings reported here, based on the analysis of 1,497,876 codons, are not caused either by differences in the biological functions of the genes or by differences in protein lengths, nor are they likely attributable to mutational bias. The data are best explained by gender-specific translational selection. Plausible explanations for these findings and the relevance to these and other organisms are discussed.