Widespread inter‐individual gene expression variability in Arabidopsis thaliana
Abstract A fundamental question in biology is how gene expression is regulated to give rise to a phenotype. However, transcriptional variability is rarely considered although it could influence the relationship between genotype and phenotype. It is known in unicellular organisms that gene expression...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Springer Nature
2019-01-01
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| Series: | Molecular Systems Biology |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.15252/msb.20188591 |
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| author | Sandra Cortijo Zeynep Aydin Sebastian Ahnert James CW Locke |
| author_facet | Sandra Cortijo Zeynep Aydin Sebastian Ahnert James CW Locke |
| author_sort | Sandra Cortijo |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract A fundamental question in biology is how gene expression is regulated to give rise to a phenotype. However, transcriptional variability is rarely considered although it could influence the relationship between genotype and phenotype. It is known in unicellular organisms that gene expression is often noisy rather than uniform, and this has been proposed to be beneficial when environmental conditions are unpredictable. However, little is known about inter‐individual transcriptional variability in multicellular organisms. Using transcriptomic approaches, we analysed gene expression variability between individual Arabidopsis thaliana plants growing in identical conditions over a 24‐h time course. We identified hundreds of genes that exhibit high inter‐individual variability and found that many are involved in environmental responses, with different classes of genes variable between the day and night. We also identified factors that might facilitate gene expression variability, such as gene length, the number of transcription factors regulating the genes and the chromatin environment. These results shed new light on the impact of transcriptional variability in gene expression regulation in plants. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-04089d5147bb447aa4f9f98bcfe11a8f |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 1744-4292 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2019-01-01 |
| publisher | Springer Nature |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Molecular Systems Biology |
| spelling | doaj-art-04089d5147bb447aa4f9f98bcfe11a8f2025-08-20T03:06:42ZengSpringer NatureMolecular Systems Biology1744-42922019-01-0115111610.15252/msb.20188591Widespread inter‐individual gene expression variability in Arabidopsis thalianaSandra Cortijo0Zeynep Aydin1Sebastian Ahnert2James CW Locke3The Sainsbury Laboratory, University of CambridgeThe Sainsbury Laboratory, University of CambridgeThe Sainsbury Laboratory, University of CambridgeThe Sainsbury Laboratory, University of CambridgeAbstract A fundamental question in biology is how gene expression is regulated to give rise to a phenotype. However, transcriptional variability is rarely considered although it could influence the relationship between genotype and phenotype. It is known in unicellular organisms that gene expression is often noisy rather than uniform, and this has been proposed to be beneficial when environmental conditions are unpredictable. However, little is known about inter‐individual transcriptional variability in multicellular organisms. Using transcriptomic approaches, we analysed gene expression variability between individual Arabidopsis thaliana plants growing in identical conditions over a 24‐h time course. We identified hundreds of genes that exhibit high inter‐individual variability and found that many are involved in environmental responses, with different classes of genes variable between the day and night. We also identified factors that might facilitate gene expression variability, such as gene length, the number of transcription factors regulating the genes and the chromatin environment. These results shed new light on the impact of transcriptional variability in gene expression regulation in plants.https://doi.org/10.15252/msb.20188591Arabidopsis thalianainter‐individual heterogeneitynoise in gene expressionRNA‐seqtranscriptional variability |
| spellingShingle | Sandra Cortijo Zeynep Aydin Sebastian Ahnert James CW Locke Widespread inter‐individual gene expression variability in Arabidopsis thaliana Molecular Systems Biology Arabidopsis thaliana inter‐individual heterogeneity noise in gene expression RNA‐seq transcriptional variability |
| title | Widespread inter‐individual gene expression variability in Arabidopsis thaliana |
| title_full | Widespread inter‐individual gene expression variability in Arabidopsis thaliana |
| title_fullStr | Widespread inter‐individual gene expression variability in Arabidopsis thaliana |
| title_full_unstemmed | Widespread inter‐individual gene expression variability in Arabidopsis thaliana |
| title_short | Widespread inter‐individual gene expression variability in Arabidopsis thaliana |
| title_sort | widespread inter individual gene expression variability in arabidopsis thaliana |
| topic | Arabidopsis thaliana inter‐individual heterogeneity noise in gene expression RNA‐seq transcriptional variability |
| url | https://doi.org/10.15252/msb.20188591 |
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