Transcriptional coordination of the metabolic network in Arabidopsis

Abstract

Patterns of coexpression can reveal networks of functionally related genes and provide deeper understanding of processes requiring multiple gene products. We performed an analysis of coexpression networks for 1,330 genes from the AraCyc database of metabolic pathways in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). We found that genes associated with the same metabolic pathway are, on average, more highly coexpressed than genes from different pathways. Positively coexpressed genes within the same pathway tend to cluster close together in the pathway structure, while negatively correlated genes typically occupy more distant positions. The distribution of coexpression links per gene is highly skewed, wi..