Common structural patterns in human genes.

Abstract

A graphical representation of the exon-intron structure of various genes, such as that presented by the National Center for Biotechnology Information Map Viewer, suggests a digital waveform or pattern that varies either in amplitude or frequency. This observation suggests that different genes may have portions of their total exon-intron structure in common. The existence of common structural patterns across unrelated genes suggests the repeated insertion of transposable elements throughout the human genome and/or a common structural function. We compared the exon-intron size patterns of a number of human genes and discovered numerous conserved arrangements with similarity at a high degree of stringency (>99%) across the otherwise unrelated and diverse genomic landscape. In our experimental analyses, more than 200 patterns of length 2 or greater at 99% stringency were found among the 72 genes we compared.