We studied the correlations between amino acid composition and mononucleotide and dinucleotide frequencies in 115 bacterial genomes of varying G + C content. Observed amino acid frequencies were compared with those, expected from the actual mononucleotide and dinucleotide frequencies. Both mononucleotide and dinucleotide frequencies correlate well with the amino acid frequency, with dinucleotide frequencies doing so better. Despite the strong correlations, some of the observed amino acid frequencies, in particular for Arg, Val, Asp, Glu, Ser, and Cys, were consistently different from predicted values in all genomes. We suggest that this variation from predicted values is a consequence of selection pressure at the level of amino acids, while the close correspondence to the predictions in residues such as Thr, Phe, Lys, and Asn arises only from mutation and selection pressure at the level of the nucleic acid sequences. (C) 2004 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.