Science 23 May 2014:
Vol. 344 no. 6186 pp. 909-913
DOI: 10.1126/science.1250691
REPORT
Stop codon reassignments in the wild
Natalia N. Ivanova1,*, Patrick Schwientek1,*, H. James Tripp1, Christian Rinke1, Amrita Pati1, Marcel Huntemann1, Axel Visel1,2,3, Tanja Woyke1, Nikos C. Kyrpides1, Edward M. Rubin1,2,†
+ Author Affiliations
1Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), Walnut Creek, CA 94598, USA.
2Genomics Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA.
3School of Natural Sciences, University of California, Merced, CA 95343, USA.
?†Corresponding author. E-mail: emrubin@lbl.gov
?* These authors contributed equally to this work.
ABSTRACTEDITOR'S SUMMARY
The canonical genetic code is assumed to be deeply conserved across all domains of life with very few exceptions. By scanning 5.6 trillion base pairs of metagenomic data for stop codon reassignment events, we detected recoding in a substantial fraction of the >1700 environmental samples examined. We observed extensive opal and amber stop codon reassignments in bacteriophages and of opal in bacteria. Our data indicate that bacteriophages can infect hosts with a different genetic code and demonstrate phage-host antagonism based on code differences. The abundance and diversity of genetic codes present in environmental organisms should be considered in the design of engineered organisms with altered genetic codes in order to preclude the exchange of genetic information with naturally occurring species.