Evolutionary origin of the U6 small nuclear RNA intron.

U6 is the most conserved of the five small nuclear RNAs known to participate in pre-mRNA splicing. In the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe, the single-copy gene encoding this RNA is itself interrupted by an intron (T. Tani and Y. Ohshima, Nature (London) 337:87-90, 1989). Here we report analysis of the U6 genes from all four Schizosaccharomyces species, revealing that each is interrupted at an identical position by a homologous intron; in other groups, including ascomycete and basidiomycete fungi, as well as more distantly related organisms, the U6 gene is colinear with the RNA. The most parsimonious interpretation of our data is that the ancestral U6 gene did not contain an intron, but rather, it was acquired via a single relatively recent insertional event.