"No correlation" can be a result...

This afternoon was my turn to present at lab meeting, so I talked about the results of the uptake sequences-vs-proteomes manuscript. One of the analyses we've done compares the degree of conservation (measured by % identity of BLAST alignment) with the numbers of uptake sequences. I had originally thought this was going to show a strong negative correlation (higher % identity = fewer uptake sequences), consistent with the general pattern that uptake sequences preferentially accumulate in genes lacking strong functional constraint.

But when I saw the graph of the final data I was disappointed, because the sets of genes with no uptake sequences had only slightly higher mean % identities than the sets of genes with several uptake sequences. We haven't done any statistics on these means yet, but it looked like the correlation was weak at best. So I was considering just leaving this analysis out of the manuscript. But the post-doc suggested instead keeping it in, and describing the lack of correlation as an interesting result. That seems like a good idea (though first we need to do the stats - I don't have the raw data so I've emailed my collaborator).

The same post-doc also reminded me of an analysis I did last summer (link to post). I don't think this result should go in this manuscript, as it has nothing to do with proteomes. But it might fit nicely in the reworked Gibbs-analysis manuscript.