Lineage-specific sequence evolution and exon edge conservation partially explain the relationship between evolutionary rate and expression level in A. thaliana.

ABSTRACT: Rapidly evolving proteins can aid the identification of genes underlying phenotypic adaptation across taxa, but functional and structural elements of genes can also affect evolutionary rates. In plants, the 'edges' of exons, flanking intron junctions, are known to contain splice enhancers and to have a higher degree of conservation compared to the remainder of the coding region. However, the extent to which these regions may be masking indicators of positive selection or account for the relationship between dN/dS and other genomic parameters is unclear. We investigate the effects of exon edge conservation on the relationship of dN/dS to various sequence characteristics and gene expression parameters in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. We also obtain lineage-specific dN/dS estimates, m

SUBMITTER: Bush SJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4480654 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature