title: Intron dynamics in ribosomal protein genes.
abstract: The role of spliceosomal introns in eukaryotic genomes remains obscure. A large scale analysis of intron presence/absence patterns in many gene families and species is a necessary step to clarify the role of these introns. In this analysis, we used a maximum likelihood method to reconstruct the evolution of 2,961 introns in a dataset of 76 ribosomal protein genes from 22 eukaryotes and validated the results by a maximum parsimony method. Our results show that the trends of intron gain and loss differed across species in a given kingdom but appeared to be consistent within subphyla. Most subphyla in the dataset diverged around 1 billion years ago, when the "Big Bang" radiation occurred. We speculate that spliceosomal introns may play a role in the explosion of many eukaryotes at the Big Bang radiation.
authors.affiliation: Frontier Science Research Center, University of Miyazaki, Kiyotake, Miyazaki, Japan.
authors.forename: Maki
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yoshihama
authors.forename: Hung D
authors.initials: HD
authors.lastname: Nguyen
authors.forename: Naoya
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Kenmochi
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D056890:Eukaryota / Q000145:classification / Q000235:genetics; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D006801:Humans; D007438:Introns; D016013:Likelihood Functions; D005810:Multigene Family; D012269:Ribosomal Proteins / Q000235:genetics*; D017381:Spliceosomes / Q000235:genetics / Q000378:metabolism
chemical_list: D012269:Ribosomal Proteins