Weak, context-dependent conservation of RNA–protein dispersion between human and Arabidopsis

<p dir="ltr"><b>Background.</b> RNA and protein abundance are imperfectly coupled across biological tissues, yet it remains unclear whether gene-specific RNA–protein phenotypes are conserved across deeply diverged multicellular kingdoms.</p><p dir="ltr"><b>Methods.</b> We integrated tissue-resolved transcriptomic and proteomic atlases from human and <i>Arabidopsis thaliana</i> to test whether relative RNA-versus-protein dispersion is conserved among ancient one-to-one orthologs.

For each gene, we defined B_disp as the difference between the quartile coefficient of dispersion of RNA and protein abundance across within-species tissues or conditions, quantifying the relative extent of tissue-level RNA and protein variation without requiring cross-kingdom tissue equivalence. Generalizability was evaluated in an independent mouse aging atlas (seven tissues, four ages) and a Brassica rapa heat-stress RNA–protein dataset.</p>