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MBE Advance Access published online on March 20, 2007
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msm045
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© The Author 2007. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Research Article

Evolutionary Conservation of UTR Intron Boundaries in Cryptococcus

Scott William Roy1,*, David Penny1 and Daniel E. Neafsey2

1 Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution, Massey University, Palmerston North, NZ
2 Microbial Analysis Group, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Cambridge, MA 02142

* scottwroy{at}gmail.com, +64 350 5515 x7626

Received for publication December 9, 2006. Revision received February 4, 2007. Accepted for publication February 16, 2007.

Despite significance progress, the general functional and evolutionary significance of the untranslated regions (UTRs) of eukaryotic transcripts remains mysterious. Particularly mysterious is the common occurrence of spliceosomal introns in transcript UTRs, since UTR splicing is not necessary for restoration of transcript coding sequence. In general, it is not known to what extent such splicing performs an important function or merely represents spliceosomal ‘noise.’ We conducted the first analysis of evolutionary conservation of UTR splicing. Among four species from Cryptococcus neoformans species complex, we find high levels of conservation of UTR intron boundary sequences, strongly suggesting that UTR intron splicing is conserved by purifying selection. We estimate that 50-90% of splice boundaries are maintained by selection. Donor site sequences are more highly conserved than acceptor sequences, and splicing boundaries are more conserved in 5’ UTRs than in 3’ UTRs. In addition, we report a variety of differences between patterns of UTR splicing in Cryptococcus and corresponding patterns in animals and plants. These results focus attention on the functional roles of eukaryotic UTRs and deepen the mystery of UTR intron splicing.

Key Words: untranslated regions • genome evolution • purifying selection


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