Comparison of cloned rabbit and mouse beta-globin genes showing strong evolutionary divergence of two homologous pairs of introns.

Cloned beta-globin genes of both mouse and rabbit each contain a large and a small intervening sequence (intron) of about equal length at precisely the same positions relative to the coding sequence. The homologous introns show some sequence similarity, particularly at the junctions with the coding sequence. They most probably arose from a common ancestral sequence and diverged substantially during evolution.