What is it about?
We investigated (1) the compositional distributions of all available nuclear coding sequences (and of their three codon positions) of six dicots and four Gramineae; this considerably expanded our knowledge about the differences previously seen between these two groups of plants; (2) the compositional correlations of homologous genes from dicots and from Gramineae, as well as from both groups; all correlations were characterized by very good coefficients, with slopes close to unity in the former two cases and very high in the last; (3) the compositional transition that accompanied the emergence of Gramineae from an ancestral monocot; (4) the compositional correlations between exons and introns, which were very good in Gramineae, but only poor to good in dicots; and (5) the compositional profiles of homologous genes from angiosperms, which were characterized by a series of peaks (exons) and valleys (introns) separated by 15-20% GC.
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Why is it important?
The conservative and transitional modes of compositional evolution in plant genes and their general implications was discussed.
Perspectives
This study evidenced the existence of two different compositional biases in plants in a time whether only very few sequences were available in GenBank (~80 for maize; the most represented plants). In subsequent work, a comparison has been systematically performed between the compositional transitions in vertebrates and plants according to their specific structural features. These studies have confirmed the trends observed in the 1990s and showed that the constraints on non-coding DNA is much higher for plants than for vertebrates. Until now, no comprehensive explanation has been given for this observation.
Nicolas Carels
Oswaldo Cruz Foundation
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This page is a summary of: Compositional Properties of Homologous Coding Sequences from Plants, Journal of Molecular Evolution, January 1998, Springer Science + Business Media,
DOI: 10.1007/pl00006282.
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