Differing patterns of selection in alternative and constitutive splice sites

  1. Kavita Garg1 and
  2. Phil Green1
  1. Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Department of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA

Abstract

In addition to allowing identification of putative functional elements as regions having reduced substitution rates, comparison of genome sequences can also provide insights into these elements at the nucleotide level, by indicating the pattern of tolerated substitutions. We created data sets of orthologous alternative and constitutive splice sites in mouse, rat, and human and analyzed the substitutions occurring within them. Our results illuminate differences between alternative and constitutive sites and, in particular, strongly support the idea that alternative sites are under selection to be weak.

Footnotes

  • 1 Corresponding authors.

    1 E-mail phg{at}u.washington.edu; fax (206) 685-9720.

    1 E-mail kavitag{at}u.washington.edu; fax (206) 685-9720.

  • [Supplemental material is available online at www.genome.org.]

  • Article published online before print. Article and publication date are at http://www.genome.org/cgi/doi/10.1101/gr.6347907

    • Received January 31, 2007.
    • Accepted April 12, 2007.
  • Freely available online through the Genome Research Open Access option.

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