Cargando…
Conservation of mRNA secondary structures may filter out mutations in Escherichia coli evolution
Recent reports indicate that mutations in viral genomes tend to preserve RNA secondary structure, and those mutations that disrupt secondary structural elements may reduce gene expression levels, thereby serving as a functional knockout. In this article, we explore the conservation of secondary stru...
Autores principales: | , , |
---|---|
Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Oxford University Press
2013
|
Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3763529/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23783573 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkt507 |
_version_ | 1782283028427440128 |
---|---|
author | Chursov, Andrey Frishman, Dmitrij Shneider, Alexander |
author_facet | Chursov, Andrey Frishman, Dmitrij Shneider, Alexander |
author_sort | Chursov, Andrey |
collection | PubMed |
description | Recent reports indicate that mutations in viral genomes tend to preserve RNA secondary structure, and those mutations that disrupt secondary structural elements may reduce gene expression levels, thereby serving as a functional knockout. In this article, we explore the conservation of secondary structures of mRNA coding regions, a previously unknown factor in bacterial evolution, by comparing the structural consequences of mutations in essential and nonessential Escherichia coli genes accumulated over 40 000 generations in the course of the ‘long-term evolution experiment’. We monitored the extent to which mutations influence minimum free energy (MFE) values, assuming that a substantial change in MFE is indicative of structural perturbation. Our principal finding is that purifying selection tends to eliminate those mutations in essential genes that lead to greater changes of MFE values and, therefore, may be more disruptive for the corresponding mRNA secondary structures. This effect implies that synonymous mutations disrupting mRNA secondary structures may directly affect the fitness of the organism. These results demonstrate that the need to maintain intact mRNA structures imposes additional evolutionary constraints on bacterial genomes, which go beyond preservation of structure and function of the encoded proteins. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3763529 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2013 |
publisher | Oxford University Press |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-37635292013-09-10 Conservation of mRNA secondary structures may filter out mutations in Escherichia coli evolution Chursov, Andrey Frishman, Dmitrij Shneider, Alexander Nucleic Acids Res RNA Recent reports indicate that mutations in viral genomes tend to preserve RNA secondary structure, and those mutations that disrupt secondary structural elements may reduce gene expression levels, thereby serving as a functional knockout. In this article, we explore the conservation of secondary structures of mRNA coding regions, a previously unknown factor in bacterial evolution, by comparing the structural consequences of mutations in essential and nonessential Escherichia coli genes accumulated over 40 000 generations in the course of the ‘long-term evolution experiment’. We monitored the extent to which mutations influence minimum free energy (MFE) values, assuming that a substantial change in MFE is indicative of structural perturbation. Our principal finding is that purifying selection tends to eliminate those mutations in essential genes that lead to greater changes of MFE values and, therefore, may be more disruptive for the corresponding mRNA secondary structures. This effect implies that synonymous mutations disrupting mRNA secondary structures may directly affect the fitness of the organism. These results demonstrate that the need to maintain intact mRNA structures imposes additional evolutionary constraints on bacterial genomes, which go beyond preservation of structure and function of the encoded proteins. Oxford University Press 2013-09 2013-06-19 /pmc/articles/PMC3763529/ /pubmed/23783573 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkt507 Text en © The Author(s) 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
spellingShingle | RNA Chursov, Andrey Frishman, Dmitrij Shneider, Alexander Conservation of mRNA secondary structures may filter out mutations in Escherichia coli evolution |
title | Conservation of mRNA secondary structures may filter out mutations in Escherichia coli evolution |
title_full | Conservation of mRNA secondary structures may filter out mutations in Escherichia coli evolution |
title_fullStr | Conservation of mRNA secondary structures may filter out mutations in Escherichia coli evolution |
title_full_unstemmed | Conservation of mRNA secondary structures may filter out mutations in Escherichia coli evolution |
title_short | Conservation of mRNA secondary structures may filter out mutations in Escherichia coli evolution |
title_sort | conservation of mrna secondary structures may filter out mutations in escherichia coli evolution |
topic | RNA |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3763529/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23783573 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkt507 |
work_keys_str_mv | AT chursovandrey conservationofmrnasecondarystructuresmayfilteroutmutationsinescherichiacolievolution AT frishmandmitrij conservationofmrnasecondarystructuresmayfilteroutmutationsinescherichiacolievolution AT shneideralexander conservationofmrnasecondarystructuresmayfilteroutmutationsinescherichiacolievolution |