Intron dynamics in ribosomal protein genes.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 17206276.
- Also identified by PMC identifier 1764039.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The role of spliceosomal introns in eukaryotic genomes remains obscure. A large scale analysis of intron presence/absence patterns in many gene families and species is a necessary step to clarify the role of these introns. In this analysis, we used a maximum likelihood method to reconstruct the evolution of 2,961 introns in a dataset of 76 ribosomal protein genes from 22 eukaryotes and validated the results by a maximum parsimony method. Our results show that the trends of intron gain and loss differed across species in a given kingdom but appeared to be consistent within subphyla. Most subphyla in the dataset diverged around 1 billion years ago, when the "Big Bang" radiation occurred. We speculate that spliceosomal introns may play a role in the explosion of many eukaryotes at the Big Bang radiation.
Medical subject headings
- Evolution, Molecular
- Introns
- Ribosomal Proteins