Modeling the evolution of ultraconserved elements by indels.

ABSTRACT: Ultraconserved elements are segments of DNA that are identical or nearly identical in distantly related species. Finding 100% identity over long evolutionary times is unexpected, but pioneering research in human-mouse pairwise alignment uncovered something even more puzzling: these elements are not as rare as previously suspected. Furthermore, their sizes are distributed as a power-law, a feature that cannot be explained by standard models of genome evolution where conservation is expected to decay exponentially. Despite the power-law behavior having been reported and investigated in a wide variety of biological and physical contexts, from cell-division to protein family evolution, why it appears in the size distribution of ultraconserved elements remains elusive. To address this question,

SUBMITTER: Biller P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12673672 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature