Compact genes are highly expressed in the moss Physcomitrella patens

Compact genes contain short and few introns, and they are highly expressed in different animal genomes. Recently, it has been shown that in Oryza sativa and Arabidopsis thaliana, highly expressed genes tend to be least compact, containing long and many introns. It has been suggested that selection o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of evolutionary biology 2007-05, Vol.20 (3), p.1223-1229
Main Author: STENOeIEN, H K
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Arabidopsis thaliana
bryophyte
Bryopsida
Bryopsida - genetics
Bryopsida - metabolism
diploid
diploidy
Evolution, Molecular
exon
Expressed Sequence Tags
Gene Expression
Genome, Plant
haploid
Haploidy
intron
Introns
moss
mosses and liverworts
Oryza sativa
Physcomitrella
Physcomitrella patens
recombination
selection
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Summary:Compact genes contain short and few introns, and they are highly expressed in different animal genomes. Recently, it has been shown that in Oryza sativa and Arabidopsis thaliana, highly expressed genes tend to be least compact, containing long and many introns. It has been suggested that selection on genome organization may have acted differently in plants compared with animals. Gene expression can be estimated as the number of hits when comparing a gene sequence with publicly available expressed sequence tags. Here it is shown that in the haploid moss Physcomitrella pates, highly expressed genes contain shorter introns than genes with low expression levels. This study therefore supports the hypothesis that selection may strongly favour transcriptional efficiency at least in the haploid phase of plant life cycles. It is concluded that plants do not necessarily respond to other selection pressures than animals regarding genome structuring.
ISSN:1010-061X
1420-9101
DOI:10.1111/j.1420-9101.2007.01301.x