In plants, highly expressed genes are the least compact

• Published in: Trends in genetics Vol. 22; no. 10; pp. 528 - 532
• Main Authors: Ren, Xin-Ying, Vorst, Oscar, Fiers, Mark W.E.J., Stiekema, Willem J., Nap, Jan-Peter
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.10.2006; Elsevier Science
• Subjects: alcohol-dehydrogenase; Animals; Arabidopsis; Arabidopsis thaliana; Biological and medical sciences; Caenorhabditis elegans - genetics; codon usage; evolution; Evolution, Molecular; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; gene expression; Gene Expression Regulation, Plant; gene length; gene structure; genes; Genes, Plant; Genetics of eukaryotes. Biological and molecular evolution; Genome, Plant; human housekeeping genes; Humans; Introns; messenger-rna; Molecular and cellular biology; noncoding dna; nucleotide sequences; Oryza; Oryza sativa; plants; rice; rna secondary structure; selection; signature; Genetics; Plant; Vegetals; Gene; Gene expression
• ISSN: 0168-9525
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tig.2006.08.008

In both the monocot rice and the dicot Arabidopsis, highly expressed genes have more and longer introns and a larger primary transcript than genes expressed at a low level: higher expressed genes tend to be less compact than lower expressed genes. In animal genomes, it is the other way round. Although the length differences in plant genes are much smaller than in animals, these findings indicate that plant genes are in this respect different from animal genes. Explanations for the relationship between gene configuration and gene expression in animals might be (or might have been) less important in plants. We speculate that selection, if any, on genome configuration has taken a different turn after the divergence of plants and animals.