Regions of DNA which do not code for a protein
3
votes
2answers
51 views
Detecting Introns and Exons
I know that when RNA is transcribed from the original strand of DNA it contains introns and exons, and that the introns are spliced out of the strand to provide genetic diversity. However, what I ...
5
votes
2answers
52 views
How to find Exons in mRNA Computationally
I'm having trouble finding a method to find exons in the original DNA sequence used to create the mRNA, even given the sequence of the mRNA, as I cannot find a way to reliably identify the beginning ...
22
votes
3answers
2k views
Why do eukaryotic organisms have introns in their DNA?
We touched on introns and exons in my bio class, but unfortunately we didn't really talk about why Eukaryotes have introns. It would seem they would have to have some purpose since prokaryotes do not ...
14
votes
6answers
595 views
Could Junk DNA be used as a Turing Machine by nature?
In what ways has DNA been studied to see if there a "programmable" aspect to it?
Has nature produced anything resembling a Turing machine within the cell, perhaps using the "junk DNA" as its code? I ...
11
votes
2answers
224 views
What are limiting factors for intron length?
For predicting genes from a sequenced genome, you need to set a maximum intron length. How long can introns get in animals? Is there some limit?
15
votes
3answers
196 views
Is exon order always preserved in splicing?
Are there any cases in which the splicing machinery constructs an mRNA in which the exons are not in the 5' -> 3' genomic order? I'm interested any such cases, whether they involve constitutive or ...
