TY - JOUR AU - Kandul, Nikolai P. AU - Noor, Mohamed AF PY - 2009 DA - 2009/10/19 TI - Large introns in relation to alternative splicing and gene evolution: a case study of Drosophila bruno-3 JO - BMC Genetics SP - 67 VL - 10 IS - 1 AB - Alternative splicing (AS) of maturing mRNA can generate structurally and functionally distinct transcripts from the same gene. Recent bioinformatic analyses of available genome databases inferred a positive correlation between intron length and AS. To study the interplay between intron length and AS empirically and in more detail, we analyzed the diversity of alternatively spliced transcripts (ASTs) in the Drosophila RNA-binding Bruno-3 (Bru-3) gene. This gene was known to encode thirteen exons separated by introns of diverse sizes, ranging from 71 to 41,973 nucleotides in D. melanogaster. Although Bru-3' s structure is expected to be conducive to AS, only two ASTs of this gene were previously described. SN - 1471-2156 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2156-10-67 DO - 10.1186/1471-2156-10-67 ID - Kandul2009 ER -