Statistical analysis of the exon-intron structure of higher eukaryote genes

The exon-intron structure of human, insect (Drosophila sp.), and dicot plan t (Arabidopsis thaliana) genes was considered, In each genome there exists a characteristic intron length. Anomalously long introns are usually the fi rst introns in genes, In each sample there are correlations between the len gths of neighboring exons and between exon lengths and closeness to the con sensus of the sites at exon boundaries. Exons and exon pairs containing an integer number of triplets are preferred. These results are relevant to the study of splicing mechanism and evolution of introns, as well as construct ion of gene recognition algorithms.