Title
Minimization of biosynthetic costs in adaptive gene expression responses of yeast to environmental changes.
Abstract
Yeast successfully adapts to an environmental stress by altering physiology and fine-tuning metabolism. This fine-tuning is achieved through regulation of both gene expression and protein activity, and it is shaped by various physiological requirements. Such requirements impose a sustained evolutionary pressure that ultimately selects a specific gene expression profile, generating a suitable adaptive response to each environmental change. Although some of the requirements are stress specific, it is likely that others are common to various situations. We hypothesize that an evolutionary pressure for minimizing biosynthetic costs might have left signatures in the physicochemical properties of proteins whose gene expression is fine-tuned during adaptive responses. To test this hypothesis we analyze existing yeast transcriptomic data for such responses and investigate how several properties of proteins correlate to changes in gene expression. Our results reveal signatures that are consistent with a selective pressure for economy in protein synthesis during adaptive response of yeast to various types of stress. These signatures differentiate two groups of adaptive responses with respect to how cells manage expenditure in protein biosynthesis. In one group, significant trends towards downregulation of large proteins and upregulation of small ones are observed. In the other group we find no such trends. These results are consistent with resource limitation being important in the evolution of the first group of stress responses.
Year
DOI
Venue
2010
10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000674
PLOS COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY
Keywords
Field
DocType
protein synthesis,signal transduction,systems biology,stress response,environmental change,adaptive response,gene expression,cluster analysis,gene expression profiling
Biology,Transcriptome,Gene expression,Systems biology,Fungal protein,Evolutionary pressure,Signal transduction,Bioinformatics,Genetics,Adaptive response,Gene expression profiling
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
6
2
1553-7358
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
2
2.27
5
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ester Vilaprinyó1284.19
Rui Alves219632.99
Albert Sorribas3667.81