Origin and length distribution of unidirectional prokaryotic overlapping genes.

ABSTRACT: Prokaryotic unidirectional overlapping genes can be originated by disrupting and replacing of the start or stop codon of one protein-coding gene with another start or stop codon within the adjacent gene. However, the probability of disruption and replacement of a start or stop codon may differ significantly depending on the number and redundancy of the start and stop codons sets. Here, we performed a simulation study of the formation of unidirectional overlapping genes using a simple model of nucleotide change and contrasted it with empirical data. Our results suggest that overlaps originated by an elongation of the 3'-end of the upstream gene are significantly more frequent than those originated by an elongation of the 5'-end of the downstream gene. According to this, we propose a model f

SUBMITTER: Fonseca MM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3887535 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature