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Updated: Jul 15, 2026

Single Nucleotide Polymorphism-sensitive FISH Detection of Locus-specific Ribosomal RNA Transcription in Drosophila melanogaster
Published on: March 28, 2025
Protein polymorphism is negatively correlated with conservation of intronic sequences and complexity of expression
Natalia Petit1, Sònia Casillas, Alfredo Ruiz
1Departament de Genètica i Microbiologia, Facultat de Biociències, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 08193, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain. natalia.petit@uab.es
Abstract:
We report a significant negative correlation between nonsynonymous polymorphism and intron length in Drosophila melanogaster. This correlation is similar to that between protein divergence and intron length previously reported in Drosophila. We show that the relationship can be explained by the content of conserved noncoding sequences (CNS) within introns. In addition, genes with a high regulatory complexity and many genetic interactions also exhibit larger amounts of CNS within their introns and lower values of nonsynonymous polymorphism. The present study provides relevant evidence on the importance of intron content and expression patterns on the levels of coding polymorphism.
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