title: Translational selection in human: more pronounced in housekeeping genes.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Translational selection is a ubiquitous and significant mechanism to regulate protein expression in prokaryotes and unicellular eukaryotes. Recent evidence has shown that translational selection is weakly operative in highly expressed genes in human and other vertebrates. However, it remains unclear whether translational selection acts differentially on human genes depending on their expression patterns.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Here we report that human housekeeping (HK) genes that are strictly defined as genes that are expressed ubiquitously and consistently in most or all tissues, are under stronger translational selection.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  These observations clearly show that translational selection is also closely associated with expression pattern. Our results suggest that human HK genes are more efficiently and/or accurately translated into proteins, which will inevitably open up a new understanding of HK genes and the regulation of gene expression.
  
  
  METHODS
  This article was reviewed by Yuan Yuan, Baylor College of Medicine; Han Liang, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (nominated by Dr Laura Landweber) Eugene Koonin, NCBI, NLM, NIH, United States of America Sandor Pongor, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and biotechnology (ICGEB), Italy.
authors.forename: Lina
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cui
authors.forename: Jiang
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Zhihua
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No,1 Beichen West Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100101, China. zhangzhang@big.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Zhang
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D003062:Codon / Q000235:genetics; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D020043:Genes, Essential; D006801:Humans; D009928:Organ Specificity / Q000235:genetics; D014176:Protein Biosynthesis / Q000235:genetics*
chemical_list: D003062:Codon