Evolutionary Analysis of Noncoding Sequences in Dicot rbcS Genes
Author Information
Author(s): Katie E Weeks, Nadia A Chuzhanova, Iain S Donnison, Ian M Scott
Primary Institution: Cardiff School of Computer Science, Cardiff University
Hypothesis
Can phylogenetic footprinting of 5'-noncoding sequences in dicot rbcS genes reveal evolutionary hierarchies?
Conclusion
Dicot 5'-NCS contain conserved modular arrays of recurrent sequence blocks, which are coincident with functional elements.
Supporting Evidence
- 36 conserved blocks of mean length 12.8 bp were defined.
- Over 90% of blocks overlapped DNase-protected regions in tomato 5'-NCS.
- 13 blocks found in all three plant families were of Cretaceous antiquity.
Takeaway
Scientists studied parts of plant genes that don't code for proteins to see how they have changed over time. They found that some parts are very old and shared among many plants, while others are newer and specific to certain plants.
Methodology
Phylogenetic footprinting was conducted using generalized Lempel-Ziv complexity, multiple alignments with DIALIGN and ALIGN-M, and the MOTIF SAMPLER Gibbs sampling algorithm.
Limitations
The dataset included several multigene families, which may not be optimized for investigating taxonomic phylogenies.
Statistical Information
P-Value
p<0.0001
Statistical Significance
p<0.0001
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
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