Abstract
The chicken (Gallus gallus) is an important model organism that bridges the evolutionary gap between mammals and non-amniote vertebrates. Here, we carried out a systematic study of the relationship between 5′ UTR length and gene expression pattern in the chicken genome. We found that gene 5′ UTRs lengths show a negative correlation with gene expression levels and gene expression breadths significantly. The relevance of 5′ UTR length to expression pattern can not be a consequence of transcription-associated mutations. We also found that gene 5′ UTR length shows a weakly positive correlation with gene tissue specificity. Another intriguing finding is that genes with 5′ UTR length <30 bp have highest expression level, highest expression breadth, and lowest tissue specificity in chicken. We argued that selection is likely involved in shaping 5′ UTR length in the chicken genome.
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Acknowledgments
We are particularly grateful to three reviewers for critical reading and important comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by the Science and Technology Program of Jiangxi Education Department, China, Project No. GJJ12658 and Jiangxi provincial natural science fund project, China, Project No. 2010GZN0021.
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You S. Rao and Zhang F. Wang contributed equally to this work and co-first authors.
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Rao, Y.S., Wang, Z.F., Chai, X.W. et al. Relationship between 5′ UTR length and gene expression pattern in chicken. Genetica 141, 311–318 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10709-013-9730-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10709-013-9730-9