Figure 1

Smaller proteins are more highly expressed than larger proteins. Comparing S. cerevisiae protein expression and protein size data. A) Size distribution of re-annotated yeast protein lengths (average of 501 amino acids). Dashed lines indicate limits for size categories. B) Experimentally determined mean protein abundance (molecules/cell) in different (bins containing equal numbers of proteins) size categories during exponential growth [24]. C) Comparing protein abundance (molecules/cell) and protein length for individual proteins. Outliers are indicated. D) Mean codon bias in different (bins containing equal numbers of proteins) size categories during exponential growth. E) Proportion of both highly expressed (>12,273 molecules/cell) and (length>771) large proteins (empty bars) as compared to large proteins in general (filled bars) in different functional classes.