title: Economy of operon formation: cotranscription minimizes shortfall in protein complexes.
abstract: Genes of prokaryotes and Archaea are often organized in cotranscribed groups, or operons. In contrast, eukaryotic genes are generally transcribed independently. Here we show that there is a substantial economic gain for the cell to cotranscribe genes encoding protein complexes because it synchronizes the fluctuations, or noise, in the levels of the different components. This correlation substantially reduces the shortfall in production of the complex. This benefit is relatively large in small cells such as bacterial cells, in which there are few mRNAs and proteins per cell, and is diminished in larger cells such as eukaryotic cells.
authors.affiliation: CMOL, Niels Bohr Institute, Copenhagen, Denmark. sneppen@nbi.dk
authors.forename: Kim
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sneppen
authors.forename: Steen
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pedersen
authors.forename: Sandeep
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Krishna
authors.forename: Ian
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Dodd
authors.forename: Szabolcs
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Semsey
mesh_terms: D001419:Bacteria / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D056890:Eukaryota / Q000737:chemistry / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D008957:Models, Genetic; D009876:Operon; D055550:Protein Stability; D011506:Proteins / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D011506:Proteins