The Kozak consensus sequence, Kozak consensus or Kozak sequence, is a sequence which occurs on eukaryotic mRNA and has the consensus (gcc)gccRccAUGG. The Kozak consensus sequence plays a major role in the initiation of the translation process. The sequence was named after the person who brought it to prominance, Marilyn Kozak.
The sequence is identified by the notation (gcc)gccRccAUGG, which summarizes data analysed by Kozak from a wide variety of sources (about 699 in all) as follows:
- (1) a lower case letter denotes the most common base at a position where the base can nevertheless vary,
- (2) upper case letters indicate highly-conserved bases, i.e. the 'AUGG' sequence is constant or rarely, if ever, changes, with the exception being the IUPAC ambiguity code 'R' which indicates that a purine (adenine or guanine) is always observed at this position (with adenine being claimed by Kozak to be more frequent),
- (3) the sequence in brackets ((gcc)) is of uncertain significance.
Kozak's paper was limited to a subset of vertebrates (i.e. human, cow, cat, dog, chicken, guinea pig, hampster, mouse, pig, rabbit, sheep and xenopus).
Read more about Kozak Consensus Sequence: Introduction, Mutations, Variations in The Consensus Sequence
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