Abstract
In general, it has been thought that the codon usage is correlated with the translational efficiency, and that adjusting the codon usage is important in the high level expression in the other organisms. Recently, we have several reports to express useful proteins in the chloroplast. Since the chloroplast genome lacks tRNA genes corresponding to the most frequent alanine and proline codons, and the expression of chloroplast genes is generally regulated at the post-transcriptional level, the translational efficiency of synonymous codons in the chloroplast might be different from their usage in the genome. Here, we analyzed the translational efficiency of several synonymous codons using the tobacco chloroplast in vitro translation system.
