ORIGIN OF GENES

Authors
GILBERT W DESOUZA SJ LONG MY
Citation
W. Gilbert et al., ORIGIN OF GENES, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United Statesof America, 94(15), 1997, pp. 7698-7703
Citations number
17
Categorie Soggetti
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Journal title
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United Statesof America → ACNP
ISSN journal
00278424
Volume
94
Issue
15
Year of publication
1997
Pages
7698 - 7703
Database
ISI
SICI code
0027-8424(1997)94:15<7698:OOG>2.0.ZU;2-Z
Abstract
We discuss two tests of the hypothesis that the first genes crc re ass embled from exons, The hypothesis of exon shuffling in the progenote p redicts that intron phases will be correlated so that exons will be an integer number of codons and predicts that the exons will he correlat ed with compact regions of polypeptide chain, These predictions have b een tested on ancient conserved proteins (proteins without introns in prokaryotes hut with introns in eukaryotes) and hold with high statist ical significance. We conclude that introns are correlated with comput er features of proteins 15-, 22-, or 30-amino acid residues long, as w as predicted by ''The Exon Theory of Genes.''