Comments(1)

DNA secondary structure is greater in introns and extragenic DNA

Donald Forsdyke   (12 April 2007)  Queen's University

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

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