Why are essential genes essential? – The essentiality of Saccharomyces genes
Authors:Zhaojie Zhang and Qun Ren
Department of Zoology and Physiology, University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY 82071, USA.
Keywords:
cell death, cell survival, essential genes, growth conditions, Saccharomyces cerevisiae
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Conflict of interest statement:
The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Please cite this article as:
Zhaojie Zhang and Qun Ren (2015). Why are essential genes essential? - The essentiality of Saccharomyces genes. Microbial Cell 2(8): 280-287.
© 2015 Zhang and Ren. This is an open-access article released under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which allows the unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are acknowledged.
Abstract:
Essential genes are defined as required for the survival of an organism or a cell. They are of particular interests, not only for their essential biological functions, but also in practical applications, such as identifying effective drug targets to pathogenic bacteria and fungi. The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae has approximately 6,000 open reading frames, 15 to 20% of which are deemed as essential. Some of the essential genes, however, appear to perform non-essential functions, such as aging and cell death, while many of the non-essential genes play critical roles in cell survival. In this paper, we reviewed and analyzed the levels of essentiality of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genes and have grouped the genes into four categories: (1) Conditional essential: essential only under certain circumstances or growth conditions; (2) Essential: required for survival under optimal growth conditions; (3) Redundant essential: synthetic lethal due to redundant pathways or gene duplication; and (4) Absolute essential: the minimal genes required for maintaining a cellular life under a stress-free environment. The essential and non-essential functions of the essential genes were further analyzed.
doi: 10.15698/mic2015.08.218
Volume 2, pp. 280 to 287, published 25/07/2015.