Protein abundances are more conserved than mRNA abundances across diverse taxa
Open accessAbstract
Proteins play major roles in most biological processes; as a consequence, protein expression levels are highly regulated. While extensive post‐transcriptional, translational and protein degradation control clearly influence protein concentration and functionality, it is often thought that protein abundances are primarily determined by the abundances of the corresponding mRNAs. Hence surprisingly, a recent study showed that abundances of orthologous nematode and fly proteins correlate better than their corresponding mRNA abundances. We tested if this phenomenon is general by collecting and testing matching large‐scale protein and mRNA expression data sets from seven different species: two bacteria, yeast, nematode, fly, human, and rice. We find that steady‐state abundances of proteins show significantly higher correlation across these diverse phylogenetic taxa than the abundances of their corresponding mRNAs ( p =0.0008, paired Wilcoxon). These data support the presence of strong selective pressure to maintain protein abundances during evolution, even when mRNA abundances diverge.
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Protein expression evolves under greater evolutionary constraint than transcript levels.
“Comparative studies (9-13) have suggested that protein expression evolves under greater evolutionary constraint than transcript levels (14)”
From Impact of regulatory variation from RNA to protein (2015) · cites this paper as [9]
There is evidence consistent with buffering of protein expression with respect to variation introduced at the transcript level.
“and provided evidence consistent with buffering of protein expression with respect to variation introduced at the transcript level.”
From Impact of regulatory variation from RNA to protein (2015) · cites this paper as [9]
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- Authors
- Laurent, J. M., Vogel, C., Kwon, T., Craig, S. A., Boutz, D. R., Huse, H. K., Nozue, K., Walia, H., Whiteley, M., Ronald, P. C., & Marcotte, E. M.
- Affiliations
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- University of California, Davis (US)
- Corresponding author
- Marcotte, Edward M.
- ORCID
- Venue
- PROTEOMICS
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2010-11-18
- Volume
- 10
- Issue
- 23
- Pages
- 4209-4212
- ISSN
- 1615-9853 (ISSN-L)
- 1615-9861
- PMC
- PMC3113407
- OpenAlex
- W2108078395
- Cited by
- 156
- References
- 9
- Citations by year
- 2026: 7 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 3 · 2021: 15 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 8 · 2012: 10
- FWCI
- 3.65
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- PROTEOMICS (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- eScholarship (California Digital Library) (submittedVersion)
- Scholarworks@UNIST (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01GM055962, GM 55962, R01GM088624)
- National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (R01AI075068)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Bioinformatics and Genomic Networks
- Keywords
- protein abundance, mRNA levels, orthologous proteins, cross-species conservation, post-transcriptional regulation, translational regulation, protein degradation, selection pressure, gene expression evolution, nematodes, flies, yeast, bacteria, rice, human
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Bacterial Proteins, Humans, Plant Proteins, Proteins, RNA, Messenger, Species Specificity, Gene Expression, Saccharomyces cerevisiae Proteins, Drosophila Proteins, Caenorhabditis elegans Proteins
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