mRNA levels within an operon correlated strongly whereas protein levels generally did not.

<p>(A, B) Histograms of the median pairwise correlation coefficient between all possible pairs of mRNA and protein profiles, respectively, within an operon. (C) 2D Histogram of the pairwise correlation between proteins in the same operon (<i>y</i>-axis) and the inter-gene distance between the protein coding regions (<i>x</i>-axis). Darker colors represent higher correlation. Proteins that had a smaller inter-gene distance were more likely to have correlated profiles. (D) Example of mRNAs in the same operon that were highly correlated. (E, F) Examples of proteins in the same operon that were poorly and highly correlated, respectively.