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Updated: Jul 17, 2026

In vivo Application of the REMOTE-control System for the Manipulation of Endogenous Gene Expression
Published on: March 29, 2019
A glimpse of a putative pre-intron phase of eukaryotic evolution
Alexander V Sverdlov1, Miklos Csuros, Igor B Rogozin
1National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA.
Abstract:
Comparison of the exon-intron structures of ancient eukaryotic paralogs reveals the absence of conserved intron positions in these genes. This is in contrast to the conservation of intron positions in orthologous genes from even the most evolutionarily distant eukaryotes and in more recent paralogs. The lack of conserved intron positions in ancient paralogs probably reflects the origination of these genes during the earliest phase of eukaryotic evolution, which was characterized by concomitant invasion of genes by group II self-splicing elements (which were to become introns in the future) and extensive duplication of genes.
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