Gilbert W, de Souza S J, Long M
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Biological Laboratories, Harvard University, 16 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1997 Jul 22;94(15):7698-703. doi: 10.1073/pnas.94.15.7698.
We discuss two tests of the hypothesis that the first genes were assembled from exons. The hypothesis of exon shuffling in the progenote predicts that intron phases will be correlated so that exons will be an integer number of codons and predicts that the exons will be correlated with compact regions of polypeptide chain. These predictions have been tested on ancient conserved proteins (proteins without introns in prokaryotes but with introns in eukaryotes) and hold with high statistical significance. We conclude that introns are correlated with compact features of proteins 15-, 22-, or 30-amino acid residues long, as was predicted by "The Exon Theory of Genes."
我们讨论了关于首批基因由外显子组装而成这一假说的两项检验。原基因中内含子改组的假说预测,内含子相位将具有相关性,从而外显子将是密码子的整数倍,并且预测外显子将与多肽链的紧密区域相关。这些预测已在古老的保守蛋白质(原核生物中无内含子但真核生物中有内含子的蛋白质)上得到检验,并具有高度统计学意义。我们得出结论,正如“基因的外显子理论”所预测的那样,内含子与长度为15、22或30个氨基酸残基的蛋白质紧密特征相关。