Discovery notes
Surprisingly high number of Twintrons in vertebrates
Institute of Bioinformatics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Muenster, Niels Stensen Strasse 14, Muenster 48149, Germany
Biology Direct 2013, 8:4 doi:10.1186/1745-6150-8-4
Published: 28 January 2013Abstract
Twintrons represent a special intronic arrangement in which introns of two different types occupy the same gene position. Consequently, alternative splicing of these introns requires two different spliceosomes competing for the same RNA molecule. So far, only two twintrons have been described in insects. Surprisingly, we discovered several such arrangements in vertebrate genomes, which are quite conserved throughout the lineages.
Reviewers
This article was reviewed by Fyodor Kondrashow and Eugene Koonin.
