Is central dogma a global property of cellular information flow?

Front Physiol. 2012 Nov 23:3:439. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2012.00439. eCollection 2012.

Abstract

The central dogma of molecular biology has come under scrutiny in recent years. Here, we reviewed high-throughput mRNA and protein expression data of Escherichia coli, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and several mammalian cells. At both single cell and population scales, the statistical comparisons between the entire transcriptomes and proteomes show clear correlation structures. In contrast, the pair-wise correlations of single transcripts to proteins show nullity. These data suggest that the organizing structure guiding cellular processes is observed at omics-wide scale, and not at single molecule level. The central dogma, thus, globally emerges as an average integrated flow of cellular information.

Keywords: biological noise; central dogma; correlation analysis; emergent behavior; gene expression.