title: Functional networking of human divergently paired genes (DPGs).
abstract: Divergently paired genes (DPGs), also known as bidirectional (head-to-head positioned) genes, are conserved across species and lineages, and thus deemed to be exceptional in genomic organization and functional regulation. Despite previous investigations on the features of their conservation and gene organization, the functional relationship among DPGs in a given species and lineage has not been thoroughly clarified. Here we report a network-based comprehensive analysis on human DPGs and our results indicate that the two members of the DPGs tend to participate in different biological processes while enforcing related functions as modules. Comparing to randomly paired genes as a control, the DPG pairs have a tendency to be clustered in similar "cellular components" and involved in similar "molecular functions". The functional network bridged by DPGs consists of three major modules. The largest module includes many house-keeping genes involved in core cellular activities. This module also shows low variation in expression in both CNS (central nervous system) and non-CNS tissues. Based on analyses of disease transcriptome data, we further suggest that this particular module may play crucial roles in HIV infection and its disease mechanism.
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China ; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: Bin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Xie
authors.forename: Dapeng
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Duan
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.forename: Hongxing
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Lei
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D063990:Gene Ontology; D053263:Gene Regulatory Networks; D020043:Genes, Essential / Q000235:genetics; D015658:HIV Infections / Q000235:genetics; D006801:Humans; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D009928:Organ Specificity