Department of Physics, School of Science, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
Frontiers Science Center for Synthetic Biology and Key Laboratory of Systems Bioengineering (Ministry of Education), Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
PLoS One. 2021 Apr 22;16(4):e0250380. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0250380. eCollection 2021.
Essential genes, which form the basis of life activities, are crucial for the survival of organisms. Essential genes tend to be located in operons, but how they are distributed in operons is still unclear for most prokaryotes. In order to clarify the general rule of position preference of essential genes in operons, an index of the average position of genes in an operon was proposed, and the distributions of essential and non-essential genes in operons in 51 bacterial genomes and two archaeal genomes were analyzed based on this new index. Consequently, essential genes were found to preferentially occupy the front positions of the operons, which tend to be expressed at higher levels.
必需基因是生命活动的基础，对生物的生存至关重要。必需基因往往位于操纵子中，但对于大多数原核生物来说，它们在操纵子中的分布方式仍不清楚。为了阐明必需基因在操纵子中位置偏好的一般规律，提出了一个操纵子中基因平均位置的指标，并基于该新指标分析了 51 个细菌基因组和 2 个古菌基因组中操纵子中的必需基因和非必需基因的分布。结果发现，必需基因优先占据操纵子的前位，这些位置往往表达水平更高。
