Research article
Properties of untranslated regions of the S. cerevisiae genome
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* Corresponding authors: Tamir Tuller tamirtul@post.tau.ac.il - Martin Kupiec martin@post.tau.ac.il
1 School of Computer Science, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel
2 Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel
3 School of School of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel
BMC Genomics 2009, 10:391 doi:10.1186/1471-2164-10-391
Published: 22 August 2009Abstract
Background
During evolution selection forces such as changing environments shape the architecture of genomes. The distribution of genes along chromosomes and the length of intragenic regions are basic genomic features known to play a major role in the regulation of gene transcription and translation.
Results
In this work we perform the first large scale analysis of the length distribution of untranslated regions (promoters, 5' and 3' untranslated regions, terminators) in the genome of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Our analysis shows that the length of each open reading frame (ORF) and that of its associated regulatory and untranslated regions significantly correlate with each other. Moreover, significant correlations with other features related to gene expression and evolution (number of regulating transcription factors, mRNA and protein abundance, evolutionary rate, etc) were observed. Furthermore, the function of genes seems to have an important role in the evolution of these lengths. Notably, genes that are related to RNA metabolism tend to have shorter untranslated regions and thus tend to be closer to their neighbouring genes while genes coding for cell wall proteins tend to be isolated in the genome.
Conclusion
These results indicate that genome architecture has a significant role in regulating gene expression, and in shaping the characteristics and functionality of proteins.