The Mutational Robustness of the Genetic Code and Codon Usage in Environmental Context: A Non-Extremophilic Preference?
The genetic code was evolved, to some extent, to minimize the effects of mutations.The effects of mutations depend on the amino acid repertoire, the structure of the genetic code and frequencies of amino acids in proteomes.The amino acid compositions of proteins and corresponding codon usages are still under selection, which allows us to ask what k