RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 Introns Control Stochasticity in Metazoan Gene Expression
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 746263
DO 10.1101/746263
A1 Bryan Sands
A1 Soo Yun
A1 Alexander R. Mendenhall
YR 2019
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2019/10/17/746263.abstract
AB Introns are noncoding DNA elements found in between coding exons of most genes in most metazoans. Introns are known to both increase expression levels and provide means for making different protein products from the same gene via alternative splicing. It is thought that evolution has selected for these functions of introns. Here we present evidence for an additional reason why so many metazoan genes have introns, and why some do not. We found that introns control stochasticity in metazoan gene expression. They do this by controlling stochastic autosomal allele bias. We determined this by measuring the expression of differently colored reporter alleles with and without introns. We find that introns control stochastic autosomal allele biases using a 5’-position dependent mechanism. Intron control of allele expression noise provides an additional mechanism to consider when pondering why so many metazoan genes have introns and why some have lost them.