Department of Biology, Wilfrid Laurier University, 75 University Ave. W., Waterloo, ON N2L 3C5, Canada.
Comput Struct Biotechnol J. 2015 Jul 2;13:402-6. doi: 10.1016/j.csbj.2015.06.002. eCollection 2015.
In this mini-review I aim to make the case that operons might be the most powerful source for predicted associations among gene products. Such associations can help identify potential processes where the products of unannotated genes might play a role. The power of the operon for providing insight into functional associations stems from four features: (1) on average, around 60% of the genes in prokaryotes are associated into operons; (2) the functional associations between genes in operons tend to be highly conserved; (3) operons can be predicted with high accuracy by conservation of gene order and by the distances between adjacent genes in the same DNA strand; and (4) operons frequently reorganize, providing further insight into functional associations that would not be evident without these reorganization events.
在这篇迷你综述中，我的目的是说明操纵子可能是预测基因产物之间关联的最有力的来源。这些关联可以帮助确定未注释基因产物可能发挥作用的潜在过程。操纵子在提供功能关联见解方面的强大功能源于四个特征：（1）平均而言，大约 60%的原核生物基因与操纵子相关联；（2）操纵子中基因之间的功能关联往往高度保守；（3）通过基因顺序的保守性以及同一 DNA 链上相邻基因之间的距离，可以高精度地预测操纵子；（4）操纵子经常重组，提供了对功能关联的进一步了解，如果没有这些重组事件，这些关联就不会明显。
