Restriction of protein synthesis characterizes human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) latency in the human host. In analyzing the molecular factors that hinder HCMV expression, the present study shows that HCMV genes frequently use 6 rare codons, i.e., GCG (Ala), CCG (Pro), CGT (Arg), CGC (Arg), TCG (Ser), and ACG (Thr). In some instances, the rare host codons are clustered along viral nucleotide sequences and represent the majority in sequences encoding short alanine and proline repeats. Given the positive correlation between codon usage, tRNA content, and protein production, the results support the hypothesis that HCMV usage of rare human codons might hinder HCMV protein synthesis, in this way leading to HCMV latency.

中文翻译：

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稀有的人类密码子和HCMV翻译规则。

蛋白质合成的限制是人类宿主中人类巨细胞病毒（HCMV）潜伏期的特征。在分析阻碍HCMV表达的分子因素时，本研究表明HCMV基因经常使用6个稀有密码子，即GCG（Ala），CCG（Pro），CGT（Arg），CGC（Arg），TCG（Ser），和ACG（Thr）。在某些情况下，稀有宿主密码子沿着病毒核苷酸序列聚集，并代表编码短丙氨酸和脯氨酸重复序列的大部分。考虑到密码子使用，tRNA含量和蛋白质产量之间存在正相关关系，结果支持以下假设：稀有人密码子的HCMV使用可能会阻碍HCMV蛋白合成，从而导致HCMV潜伏期。