The Role of Genome Accessibility in Transcription Factor Binding in Bacteria
Fig 4
Genome accessibility correlates with genomic features.
(A) Intergenic regions are more accessible than protein coding genic regions (p<10−16). (B) Regions associated with amino acid and carbohydrate metabolism and transport (COGs E and G) show statistically reduced accessibility. Genes associated with transcription and translation (COGs K and J) show statistically higher accessibility (p<0.05, Bonferroni correction). (C) Gene expression is positively correlated with accessibility. The correlation of DNA accessibility with gene expression after controlling for values of motif affinity is 0.278 (p<3.98 10−56-; function pcor and pcor.test, R package ggm). (D) Expected gene expression is highest at an intermediate level of accessibility. Accessibility bins with less than 10 data points are clustered with the neighboring bin with fewer data points. Error bars represent one standard error from the mean.