Abstract

Codon usage bias (CUB) is defined as the selective and nonrandom use of synonymous codons by the organism for encoding the amino acids. One of the important plant transcription factor family is the ‘WRKY’ whose role has been investigated in the regulation of abiotic and biotic stress responses in plants. In this paper, the codon usage pattern of the WRKY transcription factor of the two important plant species Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica rapa has been investigated. Various codon usage indices like ENc, CAI, correspondence analysis, RSCU analysis, neutrality plot and hierarchial clustering has been done. The GC codon status was high in Arabidopsis. The RSCU analysis of codons revealed that codons coding for arginine was maximum in both the plant species.Our results propose that natural selection was the main dominating factor guiding the evolution of different WRKY genes in both Arabidopsis thaliana and Brassica rapa.

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