Figure 1.

Correlation of cellular and organismal essential genes. (A) Correlation analysis of essentiality across organisms shows that both cellular (CEG) and organismal essential genes (OEG) are conserved across the investigated eukaryotes. Essentiality on the cellular level correlated better than on the organismal level. The lowest correlation of CEG and OEG was observed for human. Human OEG scores (from population studies) and human CEG scores (from cell based knockout/knockdown screens) were obtained from Bartha et al. (13). Human population studies are denoted as scores used to define essentiality. The human cell line studies are denoted by the name of the corresponding cell lines and, in brackets, the first author of the study. Additionally, the OEG and CEG scores for C. elegans, D. melanogaster, M. musculus, S. cerevisiae and S. pombe were included. (B) Venn diagrams showing the overlap of essential genes found in organisms with CEG and OEG data sets. P-values show the significance of the overlap.