Systematic Analysis of Pleiotropy in C. elegans Early Embryogenesis
Figure 8
Pleiotropic genes as “module connectors”.
The extensive existence of pleiotropic genes suggests that gene modules are overlapping rather than separate from one another. Genes assigned to the same functional class are represented as a module and pleiotropic genes correspond to the intersections of modules. In the illustrated example, the most pleiotropic kinases, including dom-6, mpk-1, plk-1 and air-1, connect most of the modules in early embryogenesis into a “module network”.