Open AccessSURVEY AND SUMMARY: Exon-intron organization of genes in the slime mold Physarum polycephalum
Author(s) -
Joanna Trzcińska-Danielewicz
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
nucleic acids research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 9.008
H-Index - 537
eISSN - 1362-4954
pISSN - 0305-1048
DOI - 10.1093/nar/28.18.3411
Subject(s) - physarum polycephalum , biology , intron , exon , slime mold , gene , genome , genetics , organism , exon shuffling , physarum , tandem exon duplication , botany
The slime mold Physarum polycephalum is a morphologically simple organism with a large and complex genome. The exon-intron organization of its genes exhibits features typical for protists and fungi as well as those characteristic for the evolutionarily more advanced species. This indicates that both the taxonomic position as well as the size of the genome shape the exon-intron organization of an organism. The average gene has 3.7 introns which are on average 138 bp, with a rather narrow size distribution. Introns are enriched in AT base pairs by 13% relative to exons. The consensus sequences at exon-intron boundaries resemble those found for other species, with minor differences between short and long introns. A unique feature of P.polycephalum introns is the strong preference for pyrimidines in the coding strand throughout their length, without a particular enrichment at the 3'-ends.