J. David Spafford (jspaffor at gpu2.srv.ualberta.ca) wrote:
: What does conservation of intron-exon boundaries mean? Does it mean that
: the genes are regulated similarly?
I don't think we know yet what the implications of intron/exon
structure are. For another example of a gene which has been sequenced
in a variety of organisms and found to have some conserved intron sites
and some movable intron sites, see the Pax-6 gene and its homologs
(eyeless in Drosophila, Sey in mouse etc...). Tip: Use the NCBI
ENTREZ system, get a protein database entry and "neighbor" on
it. Neighboring on a DNA database entry works poorly because
neighbors are based on overall identity and the introns have
diverged enough to lower overall scores.
There has been a lot of talk about whether introns are more
often inserted in genes than deleted, but no conslusions have yet
been drawn, to my knowledge.
As for regulation, look for conserved elements within
introns and other non-translated regions, rather than just
intron/exon structure overall.
--
********************************************************************
* Brian Foley * btf at t10.lanl.gov *
* T-10, MS-K710, LANL * http://hiv-web.lanl.gov *
* Los Alamos, NM 87545 USA * http://www.uvm.edu/~bfoley *
********************************************************************
