Human intronless disease associated genes are slowly evolving

Abstract

In the present study we have examined human-mouse homologous intronless disease and non-disease genes alongside their extent of sequence conservation, tissue expression, domain and gene ontology composition to get an idea regarding evolutionary and functional attributes. We show that selection has significantly discriminated between the two groups and the disease associated genes in particular exhibit lower Ka and Ka/Ks while Ks although smaller is not significantly different. Our analyses suggest that majority of disease related intronless human genes have homology limited to eukaryotic genomes and their expression is localized. Also we observed that different classes of intronless disease related genes have experienced diverse selective pressures and are enriched for higher level functionality that is essentially needed for developmental processes in complex organisms. It is expected that these insights will enhance our understanding of the nature of these genes and also improve our ability to identify disease related intronless genes.