No abstract

Several “head-to-head” (or “bidirectional”) gene pairs have been studied in individual experiments, but genome-wide analysis of this gene organization, especially in terms of transcriptional correlation and functional association, is still insufficient. We conducted a systematic investigation of head-to-head gene organization focusing on structural features, evolutionary conservation, expression correlation and functional association. Of the present 1,262, 1,071, and 491 head-to-head pairs identified in human, mouse, and rat genomes, respectively, pairs with 1– to 400–base pair distance between transcription start sites form the majority (62.36%, 64.15%, and 55.19% for human, mouse, and rat, respectively) of each dataset, and the largest group is always the one with a transcription start site distance of 101 to 200 base pairs. The phylogenetic analysis among Fugu, chicken, and human indicates a negative selection on the separation of head-to-head genes across vertebrate evolution, and thus the ancestral existence of this gene organization. The expression analysis shows that most of the human head-to-head genes are significantly correlated, and the correlation could be positive, negative, or alternative depending on the experimental conditions. Finally, head-to-head genes statistically tend to perform similar functions, and gene pairs associated with the significant cofunctions seem to have stronger expression correlations. The findings indicate that the head-to-head gene organization is ancient and conserved, which subjects functionally related genes to correlated transcriptional regulation and thus provides an exquisite mechanism of transcriptional regulation based on gene organization. These results have significantly expanded the knowledge about head-to-head gene organization. Supplementary materials for this study are available at http://www.scbit.org/h2h.

Genetic variability of Potato virus Y (PVY) isolates infecting potato has been characterized but little is known about genetic diversity of PVY isolates infecting tobacco crops. In this study, PVY isolates were collected from major tobacco-growing areas in China and single-lesion isolates were produced by serial inoculation on Chenopodium amaranticolor. Most isolates (88%) caused systemic veinal necrosis symptoms in tobacco. Of these, 16 isolates contained a PVY(O)-like coat protein (CP) and PVY(N)-like helper component proteinase (HC-pro) and, in this respect, were similar to the PVY(N-Wi), PVY(N:O), and PVY-HN2 isolates characterized from potato in Europe, the United States, and China, respectively; two isolates contained a PVY(O)-like HC-pro and a PVY(N)-like CP; another two isolates had recombination junctions in the CP-encoding region. Both the HC-pro and CP of PVY were under negative selection as a whole; however, seven amino acids in HC-pro and six amino acids in CP were under positive selection. Selection pressures differed between the subpopulations of PVY distinguished by phylogenetic analysis of HC-pro and CP sequences. When PVY isolates from potato were included, no host-specific clustering of the PVY isolates was observed in phylogenetic and nucleotide diversity analyses, suggesting frequent spread of PVY isolates between potato and tobacco crops in the field.