Use of the Codon Table to Quantify the Evolutionary Role of Random Mutations

Abstract

The various biases affecting RNA mutations during evolution is the subject of intense research, leaving the extent of the role of random mutations undefined. To remedy this lacuna, using the codon table, the number of codons representing each amino acid was correlated with the amino acid frequencies in different branches of the evolutionary tree. The correlations were seen to increase as evolution progressed. Furthermore, the number of RNA mutations that resulted in a given amino acid mutation were found to be correlated with several widely used amino acid similarity tables (used in sequence alignments). These correlations were seen to increase when the observed codon usage was factored in.

Keywords

• codon table
• amino acid propensity
• mutation probability
• amino-acid substitution matrix