Early origin of canonical introns (original) (raw)

Eukaryotic evolution

Nature volume 419, page 270 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

Spliceosomal introns, one of the hallmarks of eukaryotic genomes, were thought to have originated late in evolution1,2 and were assumed not to exist in eukaryotes that diverged early — until the discovery of a single intron with an aberrant splice boundary in the primitive 'protozoan' Giardia3. Here we describe introns from a close relative of Giardia, Carpediemonas membranifera, that have boundary sequences of the normal eukaryotic type, indicating that canonical introns are likely to have arisen very early in eukaryotic evolution.

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Figure 1: Introns and evolutionary affinities of Carpediemonas.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Program in Evolutionary Biology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, B3H 4H7, Nova Scotia, Canada
    Alastair G. B. Simpson, Erin K. MacQuarrie & Andrew J. Roger

Authors

  1. Alastair G. B. Simpson
  2. Erin K. MacQuarrie
  3. Andrew J. Roger

Corresponding author

Correspondence toAlastair G. B. Simpson.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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brief communications is intended to provide a forum for both brief, topical reports of general scientific interest and technical discussion of recently published material of particular interest to non-specialist readers. Priority will be given to contributions that have fewer than 500 words, 10 references and only one figure. Detailed guidelines are available on Nature's website (http://www.nature.com) or on request from nature@nature.com

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Simpson, A., MacQuarrie, E. & Roger, A. Early origin of canonical introns.Nature 419, 270 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/419270a

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