Publication Date:
2014-12-18
Description:
Background: Tests for the evolutionary conservation of associations between genes coding for transcription factors (TFs) and other genes have been limited to a few model organisms due to the lack of experimental information of functional associations in other organisms. We aimed at surmounting this limitation by using the most co-occurring gene pairs as proxies for the most conserved functional interactions available for each gene in a genome. We then used genes predicted to code for TFs to compare their most conserved interactions against the most conserved interactions for the rest of the genes within each prokaryotic genome available. Results: We plotted profiles of phylogenetic profiles, p-cubic, to compare the maximally scoring interactions of TFs against those of other genes. In most prokaryotes, genes coding for TFs showed lower co-occurrences when compared to other genes suggesting that transcriptional regulation evolves quickly in most, if not all prokaryotes. We also show that genes coding for TFs tend to have lower Codon Adaptation Indexes compared to other genes further suggesting quick gene exchange and rewiring of transcriptional regulation across prokaryotes.Keywordstranscription factors; interactome; evolvability; comparative genomics; phylogenetic profiles; regulatory interactions
Electronic ISSN:
1756-0500
Topics:
Biology
,
Medicine
