Exons, introns and DNA thermodynamics

Enrico Carlon (1) , Mehdi Lejard Malki (1) , Ralf Blossey (1)

1 IEMN - Institut d’Électronique, de Microélectronique et de Nanotechnologie - UMR 8520

The genes of eukaryotes are characterized by protein coding fragments, the exons, interrupted by introns, i.e. stretches of DNA which do not carry any useful information for the protein synthesis. We have analyzed the melting behavior of randomly selected human cDNA sequences obtained from the genomic DNA by removing all introns. A clear correspondence is observed between exons and melting domains. This finding may provide new insights in the physical mechanisms underlying the evolution of genes.

Domaines: Mécanique statistique [cond-mat.stat-mech]; Biophysique [physics.bio-ph]

Enrico Carlon, Mehdi Lejard Malki, Ralf Blossey. Exons, introns and DNA thermodynamics. Physical Review Letters, 2005, 94, pp.178101. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.178101⟩. ⟨hal-00128506⟩