Gabriel Moreno-Hagelsieb

Center for Agricultural Bioinformatics, USDA-ARS 746 Rhodes Hall, Cornell Theory Center, Ithaca, NY 14853
gm94@cornell.edu

We have found that homologs to genes in operons have a tendency to be conserved adjacent, and in operons, regardless of them being classified as orthologs or as paralogs. These results complement data favoring the theory of the selfish operon. The organization of genes into operons would allow them to be duplicated in tandem providing a complete functional module to be used in a different context. Thus, this association would represent another level of granularity of the biological collage.

• Jauregui R, Abreu-Goodger C, Moreno-Hagelsieb G, Collado-Vides J, Merino E. 2003. Conservation of DNA curvature signals in regulatory regions of prokaryotic genes. Nucleic Acids Res. 31:6770-6777.
  
  
• Gonzalez V, Bustos P, Ramirez-Romero MA, Medrano-Soto A, Salgado H, Hernandez-Gonzalez I, Hernandez-Celis JC, Quintero V, Moreno-Hagelsieb G, Girard L, Rodriguez O, Flores M, Cevallos MA, Collado-Vides J, Romero D, Davila G. 2003. The mosaic structure of the symbiotic plasmid of Rhizobium etli CFN42 and its relation to other symbiotic genome compartments. Genome Biol.;4(6):R36.
  
  
• Moreno-Hagelsieb G, Collado-Vides J. 2002. A powerful non-homology method for the prediction of operons in prokaryotes. Bioinformatics. 18 Suppl 1:S329-36.