Comparison of diverse developmental transcriptomes reveals that coexpression of gene neighbors is not evolutionarily conserved.

ABSTRACT: Genomic analyses have shown that adjacent genes are often coexpressed. However, it remains unclear whether the observed coexpression is a result of functional organization or a consequence of adjacent active chromatin or transcriptional read-through, which may be free of selective biases. Here, we compare temporal expression profiles of one-to-one orthologs in conserved or divergent genomic positions in two genetically distant nematode species-Caenorhabditis elegans and C. briggsae-that share a near-identical developmental program. We find, for all major patterns of temporal expression, a substantive amount of gene expression divergence. However, this divergence is not random: Genes that function in essential developmental processes show less divergence than genes whose functions are not r

SUBMITTER: Yanai I 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2792179 | biostudies-literature | 2009 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature