Post-transcriptional and translational regulation modulates gene co-expression behavior in more synchronized pace to carry out molecular function in the cell

Abstract

Motivation: Biological processes involve much complex interplay between cellular molecules at different molecular levels, and this interplay may exhibit various co-expression patterns explicitly representing the cellular inner regulation mechanism. Whereas, coexpression patterns cannot be necessarily conserved across the different molecular levels for complex regulation processes involved even after transcripts being produced. Investigation of co-expression propagation from transcript level to protein level will reflect inner regulation effects in function states of cells.

Results: In this study, we perform a comparative analysis of gene coexpression patterns in Plasmodium falciparum. We investigate coexpression patterns propagation from transcript level to protein level to reveal the underlying biological meaning of post-transcriptional and translational mechanism. Our systems-level approach shows after posttranscriptional and translational regulation gene co-expression pace at protein level is mechanistically adjusted to higher synchronicity. Moreover, co-expression patterns at protein level are more linked to function categories, such as co-expression at the same time point is more related with binding categories, and co-expression delayed by several time points is more related with activity categories. Therefore, posttranscriptional and translational regulation modulates co-expression relationships between molecules for meeting the function demands.

Keywords: Gene co-expression; Post-transcriptional regulation; Proteome; Transcriptome.