Conservation of mRNA secondary structures may filter out mutations in Escherichia coli evolution.

ABSTRACT: Recent reports indicate that mutations in viral genomes tend to preserve RNA secondary structure, and those mutations that disrupt secondary structural elements may reduce gene expression levels, thereby serving as a functional knockout. In this article, we explore the conservation of secondary structures of mRNA coding regions, a previously unknown factor in bacterial evolution, by comparing the structural consequences of mutations in essential and nonessential Escherichia coli genes accumulated over 40 000 generations in the course of the 'long-term evolution experiment'. We monitored the extent to which mutations influence minimum free energy (MFE) values, assuming that a substantial change in MFE is indicative of structural perturbation. Our principal finding is that purifying selectio

SUBMITTER: Chursov A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3763529 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature