Eukaryotes and Introns

methionine · Post by **methionine** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 7:43 pm

Hi all,
I was reading over my research paper on background information, and came across a fact that I haven't verified. I don't know where I got it from, and knowing me, I could have made it up myself because I was in a very preliminary stage of my research at the time I wrote it.
So, my question is, do all eukaryotes have introns and thus have their introns spliced out?
My first sentence in my paper is:
"All eukaryotic organisms undergo pre-mRNA splicing, an essential process regulating gene expression ..."
... I'm almost embarrassed to ask this question, but is that true? For some reason, I think that not all eukaryotes even have introns in their genes (I don't know, maybe the small ones don't?) so my statement there could be false.

Thanks for your help!
-M

jessicahua · Post by **jessicahua** » Tue Jan 16, 2007 10:02 pm

hey!

I believe your statement is true regarding that all eukaryotes have introns, and that all eukaryotic organisms undergo pre-mRNA splicing.

Hope this helps!

I will try to look up an article to support this.

methionine · Post by **methionine** » Wed Jan 17, 2007 2:34 pm

Yes, I definitely will need an article. If you could help me find one, that'd be great.

-M

methionine · Post by **methionine** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 9:23 am

Sorry to post again, but could somebody help me find an article which states this? Thank you very much.

Lise Byrd · Post by **Lise Byrd** » Sat Jan 20, 2007 1:13 pm

I couldn't find an article that specifically states that all eukaryotic organisms have introns, but most of the articles I did find seem to imply that.

However, there is a little about introns being in all eukaryotes in http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/102/12/4430.pdf

I also found an article discussing the origins of introns, if you are interested:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articl ... tid=323245

Hope this helps!
Sonia