Acta Entomologica Sinica (2006) 49, 373-380

Shan Jin, Guang-An Hu, Jing Zhang and Qing-Tao Zeng (2006)
[Analysis of intron loss in Diptera (Drosophila melanogaster and Anopheles gambiae)]
Acta Entomologica Sinica 49 (3), 373-380
Abstract: The mechanisms and evolutionary dynamics of intron insert and loss in eukaryotic genes remain poorly understood. Here systematic methods were used to assess the causes of the present-day distribution of introns in different lineage in 105 protein-coding genes containing 3 574 introns and 1 001 intron conserved sites in distinct amino acid alignment sequences in orthologous genes from 6 genomes of vertebrates (Mus musculus, Rattus norvegicus and Homo sapiens), Diptera (Drosophila melanogaster and Anopheles gambiae) and nematode(Caenorhabditis elegans). It was inferred that the common ancestor of vertebrates, Diptera and nematodes hold numerous introns, which were lost in Diptera or nematodes. The loss was even more serious in Diptera than in nematodes. Furthermore, there were a fewer intron gain than loss in nematodes, but there were even more intron loss than gain in Diptera. The results felicitously explain that the number of introns distributed in vertebrates, Diptera and nematodes are declining sequentially.
(The abstract is excluded from the Creative Commons licence and has been copied with permission by the publisher.)
(original language: Chinese)

Research topic(s) for pests/diseases/weeds:
molecular biology - genes

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Pest and/or beneficial records:

Beneficial	Pest/Disease/Weed	Crop/Product	Country	Quarant.
	Anopheles gambiae