Zika virus (ZIKV) spread led to the recent medical health emergency of international concern. Understanding the variations in virus system is of utmost need. Using available complete sequences of ZIKV we estimated directions of mutational pressure along the length of consensus sequences of three lineages of the virus. Results showed that guanine usage is growing in ZIKV RNA plus strand due to adenine to guanine transitions, while adenine usage is growing due to cytosine to adenine transversions. Especially high levels of guanine have been found in two-fold degenerated sites of certain areas of RNA plus strand with high amount of secondary structure. The usage of cytosine in two-fold degenerated sites shows direct dependence on the amount of secondary structure in 52% (consensus sequence of East African ZIKV lineage)—32% (consensus sequence of epidemic strains) of the length of RNA minus strand. These facts are the evidences of ADAR-editing of both strands of ZIKV genome during pauses in replication. RNA plus strand can also be edited by ADAR during pauses in translation caused by the appearance of groups of rare codons. According to our results, RNA minus strand of epidemic ZIKV strain has lower number of points in which polymerase can be stalled (allowing ADAR-editing) compared to other strains. The data on preferable directions of mutational pressure in epidemic ZIKV strain is useful for future vaccine development and understanding the evolution of new strains.

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We used 3D structures of a highly redundant set of bacterial proteins encoded by genes of high, average, and low GC-content. Four types of connecting bridges—regions situated between any of two major elements of secondary structure (alpha helices and beta strands)—containing a pure random coil were compared with connecting bridges containing 3/10 helices. We included discovered trends in the original “VVTAK Connecting Bridges” algorithm, which is able to predict more probable conformation for a given connecting bridge. The highest number of significant differences in amino acid usage was found between 3/10 helices containing bridges connecting two beta strands (they have increased Phe, Tyr, Met, Ile, Leu, Val, and His usages but decreased usages of Asp, Asn, Gly, and Pro) and those without 3/10 helices. The typical (most common) length of 3/10 helices situated between two beta strands and between beta strand and alpha helix is equal to 5 amino acid residues. The preferred length of 3/10 helices situated between alpha helix and beta strand is equal to 3 residues. For 3/10 helices situated between two alpha helices, both lengths (3 and 5 amino acid residues) are typical.

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