State Key Laboratory of Plant Genomics, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Key Laboratory of Genetic Network Biology, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Mol Biol Evol. 2017 Dec 1;34(12):3254-3266. doi: 10.1093/molbev/msx264.
Although it is generally accepted that eukaryotic gene order is not random, the basic principles of gene arrangement on a chromosome remain poorly understood. Here, we extended existing population genetics theories that were based on two-locus models and proposed a hypothesis that genetic interaction networks drive the evolution of eukaryotic gene order. We predicted that genes with positive epistasis would move toward each other in evolution, during which a negative correlation between epistasis and gene distance formed. We tested and confirmed our prediction with computational simulations and empirical data analyses. Importantly, we demonstrated that gene order in the budding yeast could be successfully predicted from the genetic interaction network. Taken together, our study reveals the role of the genetic interaction network in the evolution of gene order, extends our understanding of the encoding principles in genomes, and potentially offers new strategies to improve synthetic biology.
尽管人们普遍认为真核生物的基因顺序不是随机的，但染色体上基因排列的基本原理仍知之甚少。在这里，我们扩展了基于双基因座模型的现有群体遗传学理论，并提出了一个假设，即遗传相互作用网络驱动真核生物基因顺序的进化。我们预测，具有正表型的基因在进化过程中会相互靠近，在此期间，表型和基因距离之间形成了负相关。我们通过计算模拟和实证数据分析验证了我们的预测。重要的是，我们证明了从遗传相互作用网络可以成功预测出 budding yeast 中的基因顺序。总的来说，我们的研究揭示了遗传相互作用网络在基因顺序进化中的作用，扩展了我们对基因组编码原理的理解，并为改进合成生物学提供了新的策略。
