title: The presence of GC-AG introns in Neurospora crassa and other euascomycetes determined from analyses of complete genomes: implications for automated gene prediction.
abstract: A combination of experimental and computational approaches was employed to identify introns with noncanonical GC-AG splice sites (GC-AG introns) within euascomycete genomes. Evaluation of 2335 cDNA-confirmed introns from Neurospora crassa revealed 27 such introns (1.2%). A similar frequency (1.0%) of GC-AG introns was identified in Fusarium graminearum, in which 3 of 292 cDNA-confirmed introns contained GC-AG splice sites. Computational analyses of the N. crassa genome using a GC-AG intron consensus sequence identified an additional 20 probable GC-AG introns in this fungus. For 8 of the 47 GC-AG introns identified in N. crassa a GC donor site is also present in a homolog from Magnaporthe grisea, F. graminearum, or Aspergillus nidulans. In most cases, however, homologs in these fungi contain a GT-AG intron or no intron at the corresponding position. These findings have important implications for fungal genome annotation, as the automated annotations of euascomycete genomes incorrectly identified intron boundaries for all of the confirmed and probable GC-AG introns reported here.
authors.affiliation: Plant Pathology, Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam, Kruislaan 318, 1098 SM Amsterdam, The Netherlands. m.rep@uva.nl
authors.forename: Martijn
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rep
authors.forename: Roselinde G E
authors.initials: RG
authors.lastname: Duyvesteijn
authors.forename: Liane
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Gale
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Usgaard
authors.forename: Ben J C
authors.initials: BJ
authors.lastname: Cornelissen
authors.forename: Li-Jun
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Todd J
authors.initials: TJ
authors.lastname: Ward
mesh_terms: D017398:Alternative Splicing / Q000235:genetics; D001483:Base Sequence; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D030561:Databases, Nucleic Acid; D005670:Fusarium / Q000235:genetics*; D005800:Genes, Fungal / Q000235:genetics; D016681:Genome, Fungal; D007438:Introns / Q000235:genetics*; D009492:Neurospora crassa / Q000235:genetics*