Variation and constraints in species-specific promoter sequences.
J Theor Biol
; 363: 357-66, 2014 Dec 21.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-25149367
ABSTRACT
A vast literature is nowadays devoted to the search of correlations between transcription related functions and the composition of sequences upstream the Transcription Start Site. Little is known about the possible functional effects of nucleotide distributions on the conformational landscape of DNA in such regions. We have used suitable statistical indicators for identifying sequences that may play an important role in regulating transcription processes. In particular, we have analyzed base composition, periodicity and information content in sets of aligned promoters clustered according to functional information in order to obtain an insight on the main structural differences between promoters regulating genes with different functions. Our results show that when we select promoters according to some biological information, in a single species, at least in vertebrates, we observe structurally different classes of sequences. The highly variable and differentiated gene expression patterns may explain the great extent of structural differentiation observed in complex organisms. In fact, despite our analysis is focused on Homo sapiens, we provide also a comparison with other species, selected at different positions in the phylogenetic tree.
Key words
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Main subject:
Base Composition
/
Genetic Variation
/
Promoter Regions, Genetic
/
Genetic Loci
Type of study:
Prognostic_studies
Limits:
Humans
Language:
En
Journal:
J Theor Biol
Year:
2014
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Italy