Reduction in Structural Disorder and Functional Complexity in the Thermal Adaptation of Prokaryotes
Figure 4
Transcription factors in the thermal adaptation of prokaryotes.
It is assessed how transcription factors, i.e. a group of proteins of an essential function that depends on structural disorder is affected by thermal adaptation. (A) The average length of annotated transcription factors (error bars, SEM) is shown for the four groups psychrophiles, mesophiles, thermophiles and hyperthermophiles. The average length of TFs in mesophiles with the same average proteome size as thermophiles (meso-tehrmo) or hyperthermophiles (meso-hyper), is also shown. (B) The average level of predicted disorder of annotated transcription factors (error bars, SEM) for the four groups. The average disorder of groups meso-tehrmo and meso-hyper, as defined above, is also shown. (C) The ratio of TFs among all annotated genes is shown for the four groups and meso-thermo and meso-hyper, as defined above. In all three panels, asterisks mark if difference of average from that of mesophiles is significant (one asterisk: significant, p<0.05, three asterisks: highly significant, p<0.0001)