Abstract
Comparison of five relatively closely related yeast Cryptococcus genomes suggests that recombination causes internal intron loss and that DNA repeat expansion can create new introns in a population.
Highlights
Genome comparisons across deep phylogenetic divergences have revealed that spliceosomal intron gain and loss are common evolutionary events
We evaluated this prediction by estimating the silent substitution rate from all aligned orthologs from the five available Cryptococcus genomes
Previous work found that the Eurotiomycete neutral mutation rate ranges from 1e-8 to 1e9 mutations per year depending on the method of rate calculation [10]
Summary
Genome comparisons across deep phylogenetic divergences have revealed that spliceosomal intron gain and loss are common evolutionary events. Several studies have employed such techniques across deep phylogenetic distances to evaluate the relative contributions of intron gain and loss [2,3,4]. While successful at demonstrating the plasticity of eukaryotic gene structure evolution, the long times for evolutionary events associated with comparisons of deep divergence can confound estimation of the true number of events and elucidation of mechanisms responsible for these events [5]. Comparative analysis of recently diverged taxa may improve estimation of the number of intron gains and losses and identify the mechanisms responsible for the Genome Biology 2008, 9:R24 http://genomebiology.com/2008/9/1/R24
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