Conservation of DNA Curvature Signals in Gene Regulatory Regions

摘要

DNA curvature has been studied for more than 20 years and has been related to a broad spectrum of biological functions such as DNA replication, transcriptional regulation, and recombination. Studies on the relationship between DNA curvature and transcriptional regulation have been conducted for a relatively small number of genes and discrete loci, such as Sigma-54 dependent glnAp2 and glnHp2 genes, and IHF and CRP regulatory proteins. In this work we extend the previous notions about the biological relevance of DNA curvature as an element of transcriptional regulation by evaluating the conservation of DNA static curvature signals in the regulatory regions of orthologous groups of genes in 99 eubacterial and archaeal genomes.