title: Origin of introns by 'intronization' of exonic sequences.
abstract: The mechanisms of spliceosomal intron creation have proved elusive. Here we describe a new mechanism: the recruitment of internal exonic sequences ('intronization') in Caenorhabditis species. The numbers of intronization events and introns gained by other mechanisms are similar, suggesting that intronization significantly contributes to recent intron creation in nematodes. Intronization is more common than the reverse process, loss of splicing of retained introns. Finally, these findings link alternative splicing with modern intron creation.
authors.affiliation: Departament de Genètica, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona 08028, Spain.
authors.forename: Manuel
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Irimia
authors.forename: Jakob Lewin
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Rukov
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Penny
authors.forename: Jeppe
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Vinther
authors.forename: Jordi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Garcia-Fernandez
authors.forename: Scott William
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Roy
mesh_terms: D017398:Alternative Splicing; D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D002107:Caenorhabditis / Q000235:genetics; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000235:genetics; D018509:DNA, Helminth / Q000235:genetics; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D005091:Exons; D007438:Introns; D008957:Models, Genetic; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data
chemical_list: D018509:DNA, Helminth