title: Protein polymorphism is negatively correlated with conservation of intronic sequences and complexity of expression patterns in Drosophila melanogaster.
abstract: We report a significant negative correlation between nonsynonymous polymorphism and intron length in Drosophila melanogaster. This correlation is similar to that between protein divergence and intron length previously reported in Drosophila. We show that the relationship can be explained by the content of conserved noncoding sequences (CNS) within introns. In addition, genes with a high regulatory complexity and many genetic interactions also exhibit larger amounts of CNS within their introns and lower values of nonsynonymous polymorphism. The present study provides relevant evidence on the importance of intron content and expression patterns on the levels of coding polymorphism.
authors: Departament de Genètica i Microbiologia, Facultat de Biociències, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain. natalia.petit@uab.es
authors: Natalia
authors: N
authors: Petit
authors: Sònia
authors: S
authors: Casillas
authors: Alfredo
authors: A
authors: Ruiz
authors: Antonio
authors: A
authors: Barbadilla
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D017124:Conserved Sequence / Q000235:genetics*; D029721:Drosophila Proteins / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D004331:Drosophila melanogaster / Q000235:genetics*; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation / Q000235:genetics*; D007438:Introns / Q000235:genetics*; D009154:Mutation; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic
chemical_list: D029721:Drosophila Proteins