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For a long time, scientists believed that the genetic code was immutable throughout the living world. This is no longer the case. Numerous studies have revealed that the cellular machinery does not always translate genetic information in the same way. Identifying such modifications, however, is a colossal task!

Nadia El-Mabrouk, a professor and researcher in the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at Université de Montréal, therefore set herself the task of devising computational methods to help scientists detect “alternative” genetic translations that have occurred during evolution to enable species to adapt better.

The bioinformatician and her team have developed CoreTracker, a software program used to identify changes occurring during the processes of transcription (when a gene’s DNA sequence is copied into a molecule called “messenger RNA” or “mRNA”) and translation (when mRNA is translated into proteins, the macromolecules responsible for the proper functioning of the cell).

Basically, every cell reads the genetic information contained in its set of genes – the organism’s “recipe book”. A gene can be thought of as a sentence made up of three-letter words called “codons”, each of which translates as a particular amino acid. Amino acids then join together to form proteins (such as antibodies or collagen).

CoreTracker uses algorithms – a series of instructions to be executed by a computer – to find codons whose usual translation has changed. These algorithms were tested on the DNA of yeast species and other organisms with known codon changes. CoreTracker achieved higher precision and sensitivity than the tools generally used to predict genetic codes.

Nadia El-Mabrouk and a team of biologists then used CoreTracker to study 51 plants and green algae. They discovered 14 new codon reassignments in one species of algae.

CoreTracker thus simplifies and clarifies the identification of the mechanisms behind the evolution of a species’ genetic code, and provides further evidence that the genetic code is neither fixed not stable.

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