 Effective number of codons

The Effective Number of Codons (Nc) is a measure used in molecular biology and bioinformatics to quantify the degree of codon usage bias in a set of genes or a genome. It reflects how efficiently a set of codons is used in coding for amino acids in proteins, taking into account the redundancy of the genetic code. Each amino acid is coded by one or more codons (with some amino acids being represented by multiple synonymous codons).