A segmental genomic duplication generates a functional intron

• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms1461
• Publication Date: 2011-08-30T09:19:18Z
• Authors: Uffe Hellsten; Julie L. Aspden; Donald C. Rio; Daniel S. Rokhsar
• Keywords: Polypyrimidine tract; Lineage (genetic); Group II intron

An intron is an extended genomic feature whose function requires multiple constrained positions-donor and acceptor splice sites, a branch point, polypyrimidine tract suitable splicing enhancers-that may be distributed over hundreds or thousands of nucleotides. New introns are therefore unlikely to emerge by incremental accumulation functional sub-elements. Here we demonstrate that can created de novo in single step segmental duplication. This experiment recapitulates vivo the birth arose ancestral jawed vertebrate lineage nearly half-a-billion years ago.