The 5' leader of plant PgiC has an intron: the leader shows both the loss and maintenance of constraints compared with introns and exons in the coding region.

PgiC, a complex gene with 23 coding exons and 22 intervening introns, encodes the cytosolic isozyme of phosphoglucose isomerase (EC 5.3.1.9) in higher plants. Here, we report RNA ligase-mediated rapid amplification of cDNA ends experiments that showed that PgiC in Clarkia (Onagraceae) and Arabidopsis thaliana has an intron in the 5' leader. Comparison of the EMBL accessions of the cDNA and genomic sequences showed that this is also the case in rice (Oryza sativa), suggesting that a leader intron is generally present in higher plant PgiC. The intron is bounded by consensus 5'-GT and AG-3' splice sites but showed alternative splicing in Clarkia, resulting in mature transcripts that differ by 8-19 nt in length. The intron is located 18 or 10 nt upstream of the start codon in Clarkia, 2 nt upstream in Arabidopsis, and 9 nt in rice. PgiC in Clarkia was duplicated before the divergence of the extant species, many of which have two expressed genes PgiC1 and PgiC2. Full-length transcripts of both genes identified the transcription start and made it possible to identify the leader intron and leader exon (between the transcription start and leader intron) from previously obtained genomic sequences of both genes in other Clarkia species. These data permit the comparison of evolution in the leader exon and intron with the exons and introns of the coding region, a topic that has not been studied previously. Both the leader exon and the leader intron resemble introns of the coding region in base substitution rate and accumulation of gaps. But the leader intron splice junctions are not strictly conserved in position as are those of the coding region introns. Also, in base composition, the leader intron resembles the other introns, whereas the leader exon more nearly resembles the coding exons. A difference in base composition between coding exons and flanking introns is known to be important for the recognition of splice sites. Thus, the marked difference in base composition between the leader exon and leader intron is probably maintained by selection despite a high rate of sequence divergence.