A comprehensive survey of human polymorphisms at conserved splice dinucleotides and its evolutionary relationship with alternative splicing

Makoto K. Shimada, Yosuke Hayakawa, Jun Ichi Takeda, Takashi Gojobori, Tadashi Imanishi*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

9 Scopus citations

Abstract

Background. Alternative splicing (AS) is a key molecular process that endows biological functions with diversity and complexity. Generally, functional redundancy leads to the generation of new functions through relaxation of selective pressure in evolution, as exemplified by duplicated genes. It is also known that alternatively spliced exons (ASEs) are subject to relaxed selective pressure. Within consensus sequences at the splice junctions, the most conserved sites are dinucleotides at both ends of introns (splice dinucleotides). However, a small number of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) occur at splice dinucleotides. An intriguing question relating to the evolution of AS diversity is whether mutations at splice dinucleotides are maintained as polymorphisms and produce diversity in splice patterns within the human population. We therefore surveyed validated SNPs in the database dbSNP located at splice dinucleotides of all human genes that are defined by the H-Invitational Database. Results. We found 212 validated SNPs at splice dinucleotides (sdSNPs); these were confirmed to be consistent with the GT-AG rule at either allele. Moreover, 53 of them were observed to neighbor ASEs (AE dinucleotides). No significant differences were observed between sdSNPs at AE dinucleotides and those at constitutive exons (CE dinucleotides) in SNP properties including average heterozygosity, SNP density, ratio of predicted alleles consistent with the GT-AG rule, and scores of splice sites formed with the predicted allele. We also found that the proportion of non-conserved exons was higher for exons with sdSNPs than for other exons. Conclusions. sdSNPs are found at CE dinucleotides in addition to those at AE dinucleotides, suggesting two possibilities. First, sdSNPs at CE dinucleotides may be robust against sdSNPs because of unknown mechanisms. Second, similar to sdSNPs at AE dinucleotides, those at CE dinucleotides cause differences in AS patterns because of the arbitrariness in the classification of exons into alternative and constitutive type that varies according to the dataset. Taking into account the absence of differences in sdSNP properties between those at AE and CE dinucleotides, the increased proportion of non-conserved exons found in exons flanked by sdSNPs suggests the hypothesis that sdSNPs are maintained at the splice dinucleotides of newly generated exons at which negative selection pressure is relaxed.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number122
JournalBMC Evolutionary Biology
Volume10
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 2010
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank Yumi Yamaguchi-Kabata and Ryuzo Matsumoto for their planning and advice on computer programming, and Craig Gough and Akila Mayeda for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. We also thank all the other members of the Integrated Database and Systems Biology Team of BIRC, AIST and former members of the Integrated Database Team of JBIRC for technical assistance and for providing gene structure and annotation data. This research was financially supported by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan (METI) and the Japan Biological Informatics Consortium (JBIC).

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A comprehensive survey of human polymorphisms at conserved splice dinucleotides and its evolutionary relationship with alternative splicing'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this