Minimal Introns Are Not “Junk”
Open Access
- 1 August 2002
- journal article
- Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Genome Research
- Vol. 12 (8) , 1185-1189
- https://doi.org/10.1101/gr.224602
Abstract
Intron-size distributions for most multicellular (and some unicellular) eukaryotes have a sharp peak at their “minimal intron” size. Across the human population, these minimal introns exhibit an abundance of insertion-deletion polymorphisms, the effect of which is to maintain their optimal size. We argue that minimal introns affect function by enhancing the rate at which mRNA is exported from the cell nucleus.Keywords
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