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Updated: Sep 6, 2025

A Reporter Assay to Analyze Intronic microRNA Maturation in Mammalian Cells
Published on: June 16, 2022
Can Introns Stabilize Gene Duplication?
Gioacchino Micheli1, Giorgio Camilloni2
1Istituto di Biologia e Patologia Molecolari CNR, Università Sapienza, P.le A. Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy.
Abstract:
Gene duplication is considered one of the most important events that determine the evolution of genomes. However, the neo-duplication condition of a given gene is particularly unstable due to recombination events. Several mechanisms have been proposed to justify this step. In this "opinion article" we propose a role for intron sequences in stabilizing gene duplication by limiting and reducing the identity of the gene sequence between the two duplicated copies. A review of the topic and a detailed hypothesis are presented.
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