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Updated: Jul 18, 2026

Single Nucleotide Polymorphism-sensitive FISH Detection of Locus-specific Ribosomal RNA Transcription in Drosophila melanogaster
Published on: March 28, 2025
Contrasting patterns of sequence divergence and base composition between Drosophila introns and intergenic regions
Lino Ometto1, David De Lorenzo, Wolfgang Stephan
1Section of Evolutionary Biology, Department of Biology II, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, 82152 Planegg-Martinsried, Germany. lino.ometto@unil.ch
Abstract:
Two non-coding DNA classes, introns and intergenic regions, of Drosophila melanogaster exhibit contrasting evolutionary patterns. GC content is significantly higher in intergenic regions and affects their degree of nucleotide variability. Divergence is positively correlated with recombination rate in intergenic regions, but not in introns. We argue that these differences are due to different selective constraints rather than mutational or recombinational mechanisms.
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