Lawrence Jeffrey G
Pittsburgh Bacteriophage Institute, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA.
Annu Rev Microbiol. 2003;57:419-40. doi: 10.1146/annurev.micro.57.030502.090816.
The apparati behind the replication, transcription, and translation of prokaryotic and eukaryotic genes are quite different. Yet in both classes of organisms, genes may be organized in their respective chromosomes in similar ways by virtue of similarly acting selective forces. In addition, some gene organizations reflect biology unique to each class of organisms. Levels of organization are more complex than those of the simple operon. Multiple transcription units may be organized into larger units, local control regions may act over large chromosomal regions in eukaryotic chromosomes, and cis-acting genes may control the expression of downstream genes in all classes of organisms. All these mechanisms lead to genomes being far more organized, in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes, than hitherto imagined.
原核生物和真核生物基因复制、转录及翻译背后的机制截然不同。然而，在这两类生物体中，由于相似的选择压力作用，基因可能以相似的方式组织在各自的染色体中。此外，一些基因组织反映了每类生物体特有的生物学特性。组织水平比简单操纵子更为复杂。多个转录单元可能被组织成更大的单元，局部控制区域可能作用于真核染色体中的大片段染色体区域，并且顺式作用基因可能控制所有生物体中下游基因的表达。所有这些机制使得原核生物和真核生物的基因组比以往想象的更加有序。
