Patterns of evolutionary conservation of essential genes correlate with their compensability.

Abstract excerpt

Essential genes code for fundamental cellular functions required for the viability of an organism. For this reason, essential genes are often highly conserved across organisms. However, this is not always the case: orthologues of genes that are essential in one organism are sometimes not essential in other organisms or are absent from their genomes. This suggests that, in the course of evolution, essential genes...

Topics

• Conserved Sequence
• Escherichia coli
• Evolution, Molecular
• Gene Deletion
• Gene Expression Regulation, Bacterial
• Gene Knockout Techniques
• Genes, Essential
• Genome, Bacterial
• Mutation
• Sequence Homology, Amino Acid
• Structural Homology, Protein