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The pseudogenes of Mycobacterium leprae reveal the functional relevance of gene order within operons

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Item Type:Article
Title:The pseudogenes of Mycobacterium leprae reveal the functional relevance of gene order within operons
Creators Name:Muro, E.M., Mah, N., Moreno-Hagelsieb, G. and Andrade-Navarro, M.A.
Abstract:Almost 50 years following the discovery of the prokaryotic operon, the functional relevance of gene order within operons remains unclear. In this work, we take advantage of the eroded genome of Mycobacterium leprae to add evidence supporting the notion that functionally less important genes have a tendency to be located at the end of its operons. M. leprae's genome includes 1133 pseudogenes and 1614 protein-coding genes and can be compared with the close genome of M. tuberculosis. Assuming M. leprae's pseudogenes to represent dispensable genes, we have studied the position of these pseudogenes in the operons of M. leprae and of their orthologs in M. tuberculosis. We observed that both tend to be located in the 3' (downstream) half of the operon (P-values of 0.03 and 0.18, respectively). Analysis of pseudogenes in all available prokaryotic genomes confirms this trend (P-value of 7.1 × 10(-7)). In a complementary analysis, we found a significant tendency for essential genes to be located at the 5' (upstream) half of the operon (P-value of 0.006). Our work provides an indication that, in prokarya, functionally less important genes have a tendency to be located at the end of operons, while more relevant genes tend to be located toward operon starts.
Keywords:Bacterial Genes, Gene Order, Genomics, Mycobacterium Leprae, Operon, Pseudogenes
Source:Nucleic Acids Research
ISSN:0305-1048
Publisher:Oxford University Press
Volume:39
Number:5
Page Range:1732-1738
Date:1 March 2011
Official Publication:https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkq1067
PubMed:View item in PubMed

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