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Cell biology

A fable of too much too fast

Nature volume 495, pages 57–58 (2013)Cite this article

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A bacterium and a fungus both use gene sequences that fail to optimize the production of circadian-clock proteins. Two studies reveal different reasons for the advantages of producing less protein. See Letters p.111 & p.116

This is a tale of two organisms from two kingdoms that hail from very different habitats and that have nothing in common other than their ability to keep time, albeit using wholly distinct circadian systems. In this issue, Xu et al.1 (page 116) and Zhou et al.2 (page 111) respectively studied a freshwater cyanobacterium and a fungus. What these studies share is the fact that each organism has exploited the phenomenon of codon-usage bias to produce less of certain proteins and thereby build a more useful circadian clock. This modern fable features model organisms used in clever ways to reveal something new and confirm something old, and it reminds us that the goal of evolution is not necessarily to do more of something, but to do it betterFootnote 1.

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Figure 1: Balancing quality and quantity.

Notes

  1. *This article and the paper under discussion1,2 were published online on 17 February 2013.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jennifer M. Hurley and Jay C. Dunlap are in the Department of Genetics, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755, USA. J.C.D. is also at the Texas A&M University Institute for Advanced Studies, College Station, Texas.,

    Jennifer M. Hurley & Jay C. Dunlap

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  1. Jennifer M. Hurley
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  2. Jay C. Dunlap
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Correspondence to Jennifer M. Hurley or Jay C. Dunlap.

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Hurley, J., Dunlap, J. A fable of too much too fast. Nature 495, 57–58 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature11952

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