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Defining a minimal cell: essentiality of small ORFs and ncRNAs in a genome-reduced bacterium

Tijdschriftbijdrage - Tijdschriftartikel

Identifying all essential genomic components is critical for the assembly of minimal artificial life. In the genome-reduced bacterium Mycoplasma pneumoniae, we found that small ORFs (smORFs; < 100 residues), accounting for 10% of all ORFs, are the most frequently essential genomic components (53%), followed by conventional ORFs (49%). Essentiality of smORFs may be explained by their function as members of protein and/or DNA/RNA complexes. In larger proteins, essentiality applied to individual domains and not entire proteins, a notion we could confirm by expression of truncated domains. The fraction of essential non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) non-overlapping with essential genes is 5% higher than of non-transcribed regions (0.9%), pointing to the important functions of the former. We found that the minimal essential genome is comprised of 33% (269,410 bp) of the M. pneumoniae genome. Our data highlight an unexpected hidden layer of smORFs with essential functions, as well as non-coding regions, thus changing the focus when aiming to define the minimal essential genome.
Tijdschrift: Molecular Systems Biology
ISSN: 1744-4292
Issue: 1
Volume: 11
Jaar van publicatie:2015
BOF-keylabel:ja
IOF-keylabel:ja
BOF-publication weight:10
CSS-citation score:2
Auteurs:International
Authors from:Higher Education
Toegankelijkheid:Open