Unique Genetic Behavior of Nucleotide Insertion/Deletion in Living Organism

摘要

Classical genetics is based on the behavior of symmetric alleles between homologous chromosomes during meiosis.However,the commonly existed insertions/deletions (indels) will break down the allelic balance between genomes,because these asymmetric sequences have no counterparts on another homologous chromosome.By investigating indels' proportion in genomes and their genetic effects during meiosis,we found:1) ＞20％ of rice genomes are indel sequences,demonstrating that they are important genome components.The proportion of genes located in insertions is significantly different among functional groups of genes,suggesting that natural selection is responsible for maintaining such sequences;2) a strong correlation between the level of genetic variation and the distance from an indel.