ArticleMolecular systems biology2013
Indirect and suboptimal control of gene expression is widespread in bacteria.
Article in Molecular systems biology, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 70 papers.
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70 citing papers in PubMed, 120 citations in OpenAlex.
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- High expression in maize pollen correlates with genetic contributions to pollen fitness as well as with coordinated transcription from neighboring transposable elements.PLoS genetics · 2020Article
10 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Gene regulation in bacteria is usually described as an adaptive response to an environmental change so that genes are expressed when they are required. We instead propose that most genes are under indirect control: their expression responds to signal(s) that are not directly related to the genes' function. Indirect control should perform poorly in artificial conditions, and we show that gene regulation is often maladaptive in the laboratory. In Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, 24% of genes are detrimental to fitness in some conditions, and detrimental genes tend to be highly expressed instead of being repressed when not needed. In diverse bacteria, there is little correlation between when genes are important for optimal growth or fitness and when those genes are upregulated. Two common types of indirect control are constitutive expression and regulation by growth rate; these occur for genes with diverse functions and often seem to be suboptimal. Because genes that have closely related functions can have dissimilar expression patterns, regulation may be suboptimal in the wild as well as in the laboratory.
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