Common structural patterns in human genes.
BACKGROUND
A graphical representation of the exon-intron structure of various genes, such as that presented by the National Center for Biotechnology Information Map Viewer, suggests a digital waveform or pattern that varies either in amplitude or frequency. This observation suggests that different genes may have portions of their total exon-intron structure in common. The existence of common structural patterns across unrelated genes suggests the repeated insertion of transposable elements throughout the human genome and/or a common structural function.


RESULTS
We compared the exon-intron size patterns of a number of human genes and discovered numerous conserved arrangements with similarity at a high degree of stringency (>99%) across the otherwise unrelated and diverse genomic landscape. In our experimental analyses, more than 200 patterns of length 2 or greater at 99% stringency were found among the 72 genes we compared.
Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294-0005, USA. ahill@uab.edu
Aubrey
A
Hill
Eric
E
Sorscher
D000465:Algorithms; D002874:Chromosome Mapping / Q000379:methods*; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D005091:Exons / Q000235:genetics; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling / Q000379:methods*; D015894:Genome, Human; D006801:Humans; D007438:Introns / Q000235:genetics; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA / Q000379:methods*; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid