Abstract
Spliceosomal introns, one of the hallmarks of eukaryotic genomes, were thought to have originated late in evolution1,2 and were assumed not to exist in eukaryotes that diverged early — until the discovery of a single intron with an aberrant splice boundary in the primitive 'protozoan' Giardia3. Here we describe introns from a close relative of Giardia, Carpediemonas membranifera, that have boundary sequences of the normal eukaryotic type, indicating that canonical introns are likely to have arisen very early in eukaryotic evolution.
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brief communications is intended to provide a forum for both brief, topical reports of general scientific interest and technical discussion of recently published material of particular interest to non-specialist readers. Priority will be given to contributions that have fewer than 500 words, 10 references and only one figure. Detailed guidelines are available on Nature's website (http://www.nature.com) or on request from [email protected]
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Simpson, A., MacQuarrie, E. & Roger, A. Early origin of canonical introns. Nature 419, 270 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/419270a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/419270a
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