Essentiality, not expressiveness, drives gene-strand bias in bacteria.
Preferential positioning of bacterial genes in the leading strand was thought to result from selection to avoid high head-on collision rates between DNA and RNA polymerases. Here we show, however, that in Bacillus subtilis and Escherichia coli, essentiality (the transcript product), not expressiveness (the collision rate), selectively drives the biased gene distribution.
Rocha
Eduardo P C
EP
Unité GGB, URA 2171, Institut Pasteur, 28 rue Dr. Roux, 75015 Paris, France. erocha@pasteur.fr
Danchin
Antoine
A
D001412:Bacillus subtilis / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D004261:DNA Replication; D004259:DNA-Directed DNA Polymerase / Q000378:metabolism; D012321:DNA-Directed RNA Polymerases / Q000378:metabolism; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D015870:Gene Expression; D005798:Genes, Bacterial; D014158:Transcription, Genetic
D012321:DNA-Directed RNA Polymerases; D004259:DNA-Directed DNA Polymerase