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Record W4416892907 · doi:10.1101/2025.12.01.691491

Stable, intronic RNAs explain preservation of introns in <i>Cyanidioschyzon merolae</i>

2025· preprint· W4416892907 on OpenAlexaff
Patrick Geertz, Viktor Slat, Alison Ziesel, Maryam Ghaffarzadeh, Breanne M. Hatfield, Hosna Jabbari, Ben Montpetit, Martha Stark, Stephen D. Rader

Bibliographic record

VenuebioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025
Typepreprint
Language
FieldBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
TopicRNA and protein synthesis mechanisms
Canadian institutionsUniversity of British ColumbiaUniversity of AlbertaUniversity of Northern British Columbia
Fundersnot available
KeywordsIntronPolyadenylationRNAGeneMinor spliceosomeGroup I catalytic intronGroup II intronENCODE

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

ABSTRACT Despite recent work identifying functional roles for introns, we lack a broad understanding of why some introns are preserved while others are removed. Here, we use the thermophilic red alga, Cyanidioschyzon merolae , as a model to investigate why only 39 of the approximately 2000 ancestral introns were preserved in this lineage. We observe that 23 of the 39 introns encode stable RNAs, 11 of which represent a novel class of non-coding RNA (ncRNA), which we call stable intronically-encoded RNAs (sieRNAs). These novel ncRNAs are expressed constitutively under normal growth conditions and are conserved in other extremophilic algae. One sieRNA, Q270 , is predicted to stabilize a chloroplast polycistronic transcript encoding 17 ribosomal protein genes through direct antisense base pairing. Strikingly, all sieRNAs are polyadenylated under heat stress with long tails ranging from 50-200 nucleotides long, linking them to a potential heat stress response that may be critical for heat adaptation. Furthermore, DMS-MaP chemical probing revealed that some sieRNAs contain three-way junctions, a common RNA regulatory element, while others undergo accessibility shifts between in vivo and in vitro conditions, indicative of cellular interactions. Our findings suggest that introns in C. merolae are preserved to encode ncRNAs and suggest that introns may serve as hosts for regulatory RNAs across eukaryotes.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not 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.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Bench or experimental · Consensus signal: Bench or experimental
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.001
Threshold uncertainty score0.002

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.000

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.

Opus teacher head0.010
GPT teacher head0.215
Teacher spread0.205 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designBench or experimental
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

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".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

Explore more

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