RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The amount of nitrogen used for photosynthesis governs molecular evolution in plants
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 162693
DO 10.1101/162693
A1 Steven Kelly
YR 2017
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/07/13/162693.abstract
AB Genome and transcript sequences are composed of long strings of nucleotide monomers (A, C, G and T/U) that require different quantities of nitrogen atoms for biosynthesis. Here it is shown that plants that require more nitrogen for photosynthesis use nucleotides with fewer nitrogen atoms in both genome and transcript sequences. These findings reveal that plant GC content, codon use, and gene sequence evolution are driven by photosynthetic nitrogen demand.