Periodicities in introns.

The sequence information for the splicing process of introns is found in the consensus sequences at the two splice sites. For long introns, of 300 or more nucleotides, the middle regions may provide additional specificity for splicing which can be investigated by defining an adequate quantitative parameter. This methodology permits to retrieve the coding periodicity in the viral and mitochondrial introns and to identify with a statistical significance, a surprising alternating purine-pyrimidine base sequence -i.e. a modulo 2 periodicity- in the eukaryotic introns, and particularly in the vertebrate introns. This alternating structure suggests that the vertebrate introns do not have the genetic information to code for proteins, they carry structural and regulatory functions.