The characteristics of synonymous codon usage in PCV In order to investigate usage pattern of the PCV codons, we calculated various RSCU values of various codons from 28 different strains from different genotype. It can be seen from the three-dimension mesh plot of the analysis results of correspondence between 59 synonymous codons in the PCV genome (See Figure 1) , range of Z axis (f'1) is between 15 to 2.5, which indicates that synonymous codons usage in the PCV genome is not balanced, that is to say, among all the 59 synonymous codons, a part of codon is rarely used, while others have higher usage frequency. Additionally, it can be seen from Table 1 that among 18 preferable codons, 12 ones have the end base of G or U, only 6 have the end base of A or C, and so those codons with the end base of G or U are prone to use in PCV genome. Nevertheless, compared with other vertebrate DNA viruses, PCV genome has lower GC%, from 48.35% to 49.12%, with an average content of 48.61% and SD value of 0.19 (Table   2 ). And hence, the phenomenon, that in PCV genome GC content is lower while the condons with the end base of G is used in a way of bias, suggests that content of G or C as the end base of codons has effect on usage pattern of synonymous codons. Apart from this, we can also see from Table 2 , ENC values between PCV genomes has less fluctuation, with a range from 55.32 to 58.67, and an average value of 56.80 and SD value of 0.85, which indicates that codon bias of the PCV genome is stable.