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Updated: Jul 17, 2026

Using the E1A Minigene Tool to Study mRNA Splicing Changes
Published on: April 22, 2021
Exon size distribution and the origin of introns
Sigurbjorg Gudlaugsdottir1, D Ross Boswell, Graham R Wood
1Department of Statistics, Macquarie University, North Ryde, Sydney, NSW, 2109, Australia. sgudlaug@efs.mq.edu.au
Abstract:
Since it was first recognised that eukaryotic genes are fragmented into coding segments (exons) separated by non-coding segments (introns), the reason for this phenomenon has been debated. There are two dominant theories: that the piecewise arrangement of genes allows functional protein domains, represented by exons, to recombine by shuffling to form novel proteins with combinations of functions; or that introns represent parasitic DNA that can infest the eukaryotic genome because it does not interfere grossly with the fitness of its host. Differing distributions of exon lengths are predicted by these two theories. In this paper we examine distributions of exon lengths for six different organisms and find that they offer empirical evidence that both theories may in part be correct.
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