Evolution of Gene Structural Complexity: An Alternative-Splicing-Based Model Accounts for Intron-Containing Retrogenes

• DOI: 10.1104/pp.113.231696
• Publication Date: 2014-02-12T03:55:49Z
• Authors: Chengjun Zhang; Andrea R. Gschwend; Yidan Ouyang; Manyuan Long
• Keywords: Group II intron

Abstract The structure of eukaryotic genes evolves extensively by intron loss or gain. Previous studies have revealed two models for gene evolution through the introns: RNA-based conversion, dubbed Fink model and retroposition model. However, retrogenes that experienced both intron-retaining events been ignored; evolutionary processes responsible variation in complex exon-intron were unknown. We detected hundreds retroduplication-derived human (Homo sapiens), fly (Drosophila melanogaster), rice (Oryza sativa), Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) categorized them either as duplicated all introns lost at least one retained compared with parental copy (intron-retaining [IR] type). Our new attributes retention alternative splicing to generation these IR-type pairs. presented 25 an isoform same locations duplicate genes, which directly support our hypothesis. alternative-splicing-based conjunction can explain observed. discovered a greater percentage plants than animals, may be due abundance cases plants. Given prevalence plants, this gives plant genomes very structures.