University College London, Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment, London, WC1E 6BT, UK.
Trends Genet. 2012 Nov;28(11):560-5. doi: 10.1016/j.tig.2012.07.003. Epub 2012 Aug 2.
Cell size is highly variable; cells from various tissues differ in volume over orders of magnitudes, from tiny lymphocytes to giant neurons, and cells of a given type change size during the cell cycle. Larger cells need to produce and maintain higher amounts of RNA and protein to sustain biomass and function, although the genome content often remains constant. Available data indicate that the transcriptional and translational outputs scale with cell size at a genome-wide level, but how such remarkably coordinated regulation is achieved remains largely mysterious. With global and systems-level approaches becoming more widespread and quantitative, it is worth revisiting this fascinating problem. Here, we outline current knowledge of the fundamental relations between genome regulation and cell size, and highlight the biological implications and potential mechanisms of the global tuning of gene expression to cellular volume.
细胞大小具有高度可变性；不同组织的细胞在体积上存在数量级的差异，从小淋巴细胞到巨大神经元，而且同一类型的细胞在细胞周期中会改变大小。较大的细胞需要产生和维持更多的 RNA 和蛋白质来维持生物量和功能，尽管基因组含量通常保持不变。现有数据表明，转录和翻译产物在全基因组水平上与细胞大小成比例，但这种显著协调的调节是如何实现的仍然很大程度上是个谜。随着全球和系统水平方法的应用越来越广泛和定量，重新审视这个引人入胜的问题是值得的。在这里，我们概述了基因组调控与细胞大小之间基本关系的现有知识，并强调了基因表达对细胞体积的全局调节的生物学意义和潜在机制。
