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doi:10.1534/genetics.105.048066
A more recent version of this article appeared on December 1, 2005.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR |
The small introns of antisense genes are better explained by selection for rapid transcription than by 'genomic design'
Jianjun Chen 1*, Miao Sun 1, Janet D. Rowley 1 and Laurence D. Hurst 2
1 University of Chicago
2 University of Bath
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jchen{at}medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu.
Submitted on July 11, 2005
Revised on August 11, 2005
Accepted on 21 August 2005
Several models have been proposed to explain why expression parameters of a gene might be related to the size of the gene's introns. These include the idea that an energetic cost of transcription should favor smaller introns in highly expressed genes (the 'economy selection' argument) and that tissue-specific genes reside in genomic locations with complex chromatin level control requiring large amounts of non-coding DNA (the 'genomic design' hypothesis). We recently proposed a modification of the economy model arguing that, for some genes, the time expression takes is more important than the energetic cost, such that some weakly but rapidly expressed genes might also have small introns. We suggested that antisense genes might be such a class and showed that the data appears to be consistent with this. We now re-examine this model to ask whether a) the effects described were solely owing to the fact that antisense genes are often non-coding RNA and b) whether we can confidently reject the 'genomic design' model as an explanation for the facts. We show that the effects are not specific to non-coding RNAs and that the predictions of the 'genomic design' model are not for the most part upheld.
Key Words: Antisense, efficiency selection, genomic design, introns, non-coding RNA
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