Modern origin of numerous alternatively spliced human introns from tandem arrays
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Despite the widespread occurrence of spliceosomal introns in the genomes of higher eukaryotes, their origin remains controversial. One model proposes that the duplication of small genomic portions could have provided the boundaries for new introns. If this mechanism has occurred recently, the 5' and 3' boundaries of each resulting intron should display distinctive sequence similarity. Here, we report that the human genome contains an excess of introns with perfect matching sequences at boundaries. One-third of these introns interrupt the protein-coding sequences of known genes. Introns with the best-matching boundaries are invariably found in tandem arrays of direct repeats. Sequence analysis of the arrays indicates that many intron-breeding repeats have disseminated in several genes at different times during human evolution. A comparison with orthologous regions in mouse and chimpanzee suggests a young age for the human introns with the most-similar boundaries. Finally, we show that these human introns are alternatively spliced with exceptionally high frequency. Our study indicates that genomic duplication has been an important mode of intron gain in mammals. The alternative splicing of transcripts containing these intron-breeding repeats may provide the plasticity required for the rapid evolution of new human proteins.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".