title: Conservation of gene co-regulation in prokaryotes and eukaryotes.
abstract: Genes that are part of the same operon in prokaryotes, or have the same expression pattern in eukaryotes, are transcriptionally co-regulated. If genes are consistently co-regulated across distantly related organisms, the genes have closely associated functions. It has been shown previously that such genes have a strong tendency to belong to the same protein complex in prokaryotes, and we show by an analysis of the sequences and their expression in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae and the worm Caenorhabditis elegans that this is also true for eukaryotes. Our analysis reveals that the number of conserved co-regulated genes is small in eukaryotes, as has been shown previously in prokaryotes, indicating that there are extensive variations in the gene regulatory network across organisms.
authors.affiliation: MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 2QH, UK. sat@mrc-lmb.cam.ac.uk
authors.forename: Sarah A
authors.initials: SA
authors.lastname: Teichmann
authors.forename: M Madan
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Babu
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000235:genetics*; D005057:Eukaryotic Cells; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005656:Fungal Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D015964:Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial; D015966:Gene Expression Regulation, Fungal; D005800:Genes, Fungal; D017238:Genes, Helminth; D015801:Helminth Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D009876:Operon; D011387:Prokaryotic Cells; D012441:Saccharomyces cerevisiae / Q000235:genetics* / Q000502:physiology; D020539:Sequence Analysis, Protein; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D013045:Species Specificity
chemical_list: D005656:Fungal Proteins; D015801:Helminth Proteins