Gene clustering drives the transcriptional coherence of disparate biological processes in eukaryotes.

Authors

Richard I Joh, Michael S Lawrence, Martin J Aryee, Mo Motamedi

Published in

iScience. Volume 29. Issue 8. Pages 116971. Aug 21, 2026. Epub Jul 25, 2026.

Abstract

The establishment of distinct transcriptional states entails coordinated transcriptional coregulation of several functionally disparate biological processes (fd-BPs), involving thousands of genes scattered throughout the genome. Linear clustering of genes in a single BP is one strategy for their transcriptional coregulation. However, whether such gene clustering also plays a role in transcriptional coherence of several fd-BPs remains unexplored. Here, by analyzing the genomes of eukaryotes ranging from yeast to plants to humans, we find thousands of conserved and species-specific clustered fd-BP pairs, many of which are transcriptionally correlated in normal human tissues. Strikingly, our results reveal that often this system-level transcriptional coordination is achieved in part by the genic proximity of regulatory nodes of fd-BPs (such as transcription factors) whose coregulation drives the transcriptional coherence of their respective pathways. This, we hypothesize, is one strategy for creating coregulated, tunable modulons in eukaryotes.

PMID:
42564574
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 07 Aug 2026.

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