Human housekeeping genes are compact

We identify a set of 575 human genes that are expressed in all conditions tested in a publicly available database of microarray results. Based on this common occurrence, the set is expected to be rich in 'housekeeping' genes, showing constitutive expression in all tissues. We compare selected aspects of their genomic structure with a set of background genes. We find that the introns, untranslated regions and coding sequences of the housekeeping genes are shorter, indicating a selection for compactness in these genes.