Impact of transcriptional properties on essentiality and evolutionary rate.

Full Abstract

We characterized general transcriptional activity and variability of eukaryotic genes from global expression profiles of human, mouse, rat, fly, plants, and yeast. The variability shows a higher degree of divergence between distant species, implying that it is more closely related to phenotypic evolution, than the activity. More specifically, we show that transcriptional variability should be a true indicator of evolutionary rate. If we rule out the effect of translational selection, which seems to operate only in yeast, the apparent slow evolution of highly expressed genes should be attributed to their low variability. Meanwhile, rapidly evolving genes may acquire a high level of transcriptional variability and contribute to phenotypic variations. Essentiality also seems to be correlated with the variability, not the activity. We show that indispensable or highly interactive proteins tend to be present in high abundance to maintain a low variability. Our results challenge the current theory that highly expressed genes are essential and evolve slowly. Transcriptional variability, rather than transcriptional activity, might be a common indicator of essentiality and evolutionary rate, contributing to the correlation between the two variables.

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Author information

Author/s: Choi, Jung Kyoon (JK); Kim, Sang Cheol (SC); Seo, Jungmin (J); Kim, Sangsoo (S); Bhak, Jong (J);

Affiliation: Korean BioInformation Center, KRIBB, Daejeon 305-806, Korea.

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Genetics (Genetics), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2007-Jan; vol 175 (issue 1) : pp 199-206

Dates: Created 2007/01/24; Completed 2007/04/03;

PMID: 17057246, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

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MeSH headings (categories)

This article was linked to the MESH Headings shown below.

Animals
Drosophila melanogaster - genetics
Evolution, Molecular
Humans - genetics
Mice - genetics

Models, Genetic
Plants - genetics
Rats - genetics
Saccharomyces cerevisiae - genetics
Selection (Genetics)

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