Open AccessMinimal Introns Are Not “Junk”
Author(s) -
Jun Yu,
Zhi-Yong Yang,
Miho Kibukawa,
Marcia N. Paddock,
Douglas A. Passey,
Gane KaShu Wong
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
genome research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 9.556
H-Index - 297
eISSN - 1549-5469
pISSN - 1088-9051
DOI - 10.1101/gr.224602
Subject(s) - intron , biology , multicellular organism , genetics , population , function (biology) , gene , demography , sociology
Intron-size distributions for most multicellular (and some unicellular) eukaryotes have a sharp peak at their "minimal intron" size. Across the human population, these minimal introns exhibit an abundance of insertion-deletion polymorphisms, the effect of which is to maintain their optimal size. We argue that minimal introns affect function by enhancing the rate at which mRNA is exported from the cell nucleus.
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