We have determined the absolute translation rates for four individual codons in Escherichia coli. We used our previously described system for direct measurements of in vivo translation rates using small, in-frame inserts in the lacZ gene. The inserts consisted of multiple synthetic 30 base-pair DNA oligomers with high densities of the four individual codons, GAA (Glu), GAG (Glu), CCG (Pro) and CGA (Arg). Our method is independent of expression level, of mRNA half-life and of transcription rate. Codon GAA was found to be translated with a rate of 21.6 codons/second whereas codon GAG was translated 3.4-fold slower (6.4 codons/s). These two codons are read by the same tRNA species. Codon CCG and CGA are both read by abundant tRNA species but nevertheless we found them to be translated slowly with rates of 5.8 and 4.2 codons/second, respectively. The context of these codons were varied, but we found no significant influence of context on their translation rates and we suggest a mechanism for why context may not affect translation rates.

One insert with a low translation rate gave results that most readily can be explained by assuming queue formation of ribosomes on the insert. Such a queue was found to reduce the expression level by approximately 35%. Our experiments allowed us to estimate the average distance between ribosomes and thereby the translation initiation frequency on the wild-type lacZ mRNA. This was found to be one per three seconds.