Plant operons

This is an idea that conserved synteny can be derived from linked genes participating in the same pathway, and resembles the bacterial operons in that these genes are likely co-regulated. One example was reported extensively in a Science paper (http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/1154990).

In CoGe, the tightly linked gene clusters can be easily found by setting the DAGchainer parameters to be small (say -A 1 -D 2), therefore allowing only 1-2 gene gaps between syntenic anchors.

Example 1: http://genomevolution.org/r/rr6 this is a four-gene cassette between rice and grape