Skip Navigation



MBE Advance Access published online on April 29, 2007
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msm082
This Article
Right arrow Advance Access manuscript (PDF) Freely available
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
24/8/1579    most recent
msm082v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Roy, S. W.
Right arrow Articles by Penny, D.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Roy, S. W.
Right arrow Articles by Penny, D.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© 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

Letter

On the Incidence of Intron Loss and Gain in Paralogous Gene Families

Scott William Roy and David Penny

Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

scottwroy{at}gmail.com, +64 6 350 5515 x7626 (phone), +64 6 350 5626 (fax)

Received for publication January 10, 2007. Revision received March 19, 2007. Accepted for publication April 10, 2007.

Understanding gene duplication and gene structure evolution are fundamental goals of molecular evolutionary biology. A previous study (Babenko et al. 2004. Prevalance of intron gain over intron loss in the evolution of paralogous gene families. Nucleic Acids Res. 32: 3724-3733) utilized Dollo parsimony to infer spliceosomal intron losses and gains in paralogous gene families, and concluded that there was a general excess of gains over losses. This result contrasts with patterns in orthologous genes, in which most lineages show an excess of intron losses over gains, suggesting the possibility of fundamentally different modes of intron evolution between orthologous and paralogous genes. We further studied the data and found a low level of intron position conservation with outgroups, leading to problems with using Dollo parsimony to analyze the data. Statistical reanalysis of the data suggests instead that intron losses have outnumbered intron gains in paralogous gene families.

Key Words: gene duplication • gene families • genome evolution • parsimony • statistical inference


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Nucleic Acids ResHome page
G. Pavesi, F. Zambelli, C. Caggese, and G. Pesole
Exalign: a new method for comparative analysis of exon-intron gene structures
Nucleic Acids Res., May 1, 2008; 36(8): e47 - e47.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]

Home page
 Nucleic Acids ResHome page
M. Irimia and S. W. Roy
Spliceosomal introns as tools for genomic and evolutionary analysis
Nucleic Acids Res., March 1, 2008; 36(5): 1703 - 1712.
[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]


Disclaimer: Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.