Codon usage bias and environmental adaptation in microbial organisms

In each genome, synonymous codons are used with different frequencies; this general phenomenon is known as codon usage bias. It has been previously recognised that codon usage bias could affect the cellular fitness and might be associated with the ecology of microbial organisms. In this exploratory study, we investigated the relationship between codon usage bias, lifestyles (thermophiles vs. mesophiles; pathogenic vs. non-pathogenic; halophilic vs. non-halophilic; aerobic vs. anaerobic and facultative) and habitats (aquatic, terrestrial, host-associated, specialised, multiple) of 615 microbial organisms (544 bacteria and 71 archaea). Principal component analysis revealed that species with given phenotypic traits and living in similar environmental conditions have similar codon preferences, as represented by the relative synonymous codon usage (RSCU) index, and similar spectra of tRNA availability, as gauged by the tRNA gene copy number (tGCN). Moreover, by measuring the average tRNA adaptation index (tAI) for each genome, an index that can be associated with translational efficiency, we observed that organisms able to live in multiple habitats, including facultative organisms, mesophiles and pathogenic bacteria, are characterised by a reduced translational efficiency, consistently with their need to adapt to different environments. Our results show that synonymous codon choices might be under strong translational selection, which modulates the choice of the codons to differently match tRNA availability, depending on the organism’s lifestyle needs. To our knowledge, this is the first large-scale study that examines the role of codon bias and translational efficiency in the adaptation of microbial organisms to the environment in which they live.