DNA secondary structure is greater in introns and extragenic DNA
Donald Forsdyke, Queen's University
12 April 2007
The authors conclude: “there is likely to be an evolutionary selection against formation of secondary structure in open reading frames. To our knowledge, this trend has not yet been demonstrated on a genome-wide scale.”
The trend was demonstrated in our laboratory in a series of papers beginning in 1995, which have recently been summarized in a textbook [1]. The author's suggestion that the selective pressure was to facilitate mRNA translation may be partly true, but other pressures are those of protein-encoding and purine-loading, and the requirement for adherence to the RNY rule [1].
1. Forsdyke DR: Evolutionary Bioinformatics, Springer, New York.
DNA secondary structure is greater in introns and extragenic DNA
12 April 2007
The authors conclude: “there is likely to be an evolutionary selection against formation of secondary structure in open reading frames. To our knowledge, this trend has not yet been demonstrated on a genome-wide scale.”
The trend was demonstrated in our laboratory in a series of papers beginning in 1995, which have recently been summarized in a textbook [1]. The author's suggestion that the selective pressure was to facilitate mRNA translation may be partly true, but other pressures are those of protein-encoding and purine-loading, and the requirement for adherence to the RNY rule [1].
1. Forsdyke DR: Evolutionary Bioinformatics, Springer, New York.
Competing interests
None