I was waiting two years to see this out!! The genomic location of bacterial genes is not random!!! Congratulation on the authors (Martin Lercher and Team!). www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

Indeed, a reverse approach allowed to predict generation times in bacteria!! DOI: - 10.1371/journal.pgen.1000808 but also this great recent paper doi.org/10.1073/pnas...

In the meantime, in 2012 Georgi Muskhelishvili Lab discovered that some genes are ordered along the ori-ter axis of bacterial chromsomes according to their expression order along the growth phases! www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

All this work showed that the bacterial gene order is crucial for cell physiology! The work by Lercher Team takes this hypothesis a step forward since they suggest that it is rather the rule, since most genes have particular locations within bacterial chromsomes.

We have contributed by testing all these hypetheses experimentally for example by studing ribosomal protein genes! journals.asm.org/doi/full/10....

This review summarizes many other (and better) experimental works in where the genomic location of genes is crucial for their function. www.cell.com/trends/micro...