An overview on the DNA nucleotide compositions across kingdoms

Abstract

The DNA nucleotide compositions vary among species. This fascinating phenomenon has been studied for decades with some interesting questions remaining unclear. Recent years, thousands of genomes have been sequenced, but general evaluations on the nucleotide compositions across different phylogenetic groups are still absent. In this letter, I analyzed 371 genomes from different kingdoms and provided an overview on DNA nucleotide compositions. A number of important topics were discussed, including GC content, DNA strand symmetricity, CDS purine content, codon usage, thermophilicity in prokaryotes and non-coding RNA genes. I also gave explanations to two long debated questions: 1) both genome GC content and CDS purine content are correlated with the thermophilicity in archaea, but not in bacteria; 2) the purine rich pattern of CDS in most species is mainly a consequence of coding requirement, but not mRNA interaction dynamics. This study provides valuable information and ideas for future investigations.