With respect to translational costs, reductions in protein length of highly transcribed genes should have similar advantages to the usage of optimal codons and of reduced-cost amino acids in terms of biosynthesis, suggesting potential for co-evolution of these traits (Akashi 2001, 2003).
The differences in evolutionary rates of genes have been adscribed to functional constraints, but a debate is open to clarify the importance of translational costs, reflected in misfolding [ 47], structural factors [ 48, 49], and even pleiotropy [ 50], as the factors influencing the evolution of proteins.
In our study, the results of QOL surveys, translational research, and cost effectiveness analysis are secondary endpoints.
The synonymous position affects either the efficiency of translation (and hence the cost of expression) or translational accuracy (and hence the mean specific activity of the protein produced).
In the United Kingdom, the National Institute for Health Research has established 11 biomedical research centers devoted to translational research at a cost of ₤450 million over 5 years.
Squeezing them into the other columns would have increased the cost of translational errors in these columns.
The second alternative hinges on the ambush hypothesis [ 23], the idea that selection favours out-of-frame stop codons to minimise the cost of translational frameshift errors.
Hence, from equation (6), Φ tends to a limiting value Φ0, given by (9) Φ0 is no longer a cost of translational error, it is a cost of using the best available amino acid instead of the preferred amino acid.
Our results do not support an alternative prediction for translational accuracy where the cost of incorporation of erroneous amino acids during elongation will drive large genes to have higher codon bias than small genes (Eyre-Walker 1996) as observed in yeast (Eyre-Walker 1996; Moriyama and Powell 1998; Stoletzki and Eyre-Walker 2007).
