Consensus DNA Sequences of Intron Junctions (Splice Donors and Splice Acceptors) in C. elegans

    Exon n   |<----------Intron n -------------------------------------->| Exon n+1

                Splice Donor                            Splice Acceptor     
(A/G)   A   G | G   T   A  A  G  T  T  ...(T/A)...   T   T  T   C  A   G | (G/A)   
                                                          
				                                           
47/23  63  67 |100 100 73 77 75 62 60 ...(44/33)... 91  98 70  70 100 100| 45/36

Numbers below indicate the percentage of sequences examined that contain the base indicated. Note that all* introns begin with "GT" and end with "AG."
*Since these data were assembled, rare exceptions to these sequences have been discovered.

Introns and other non-coding sequence in C. elegans are "AT-rich," that is, more than 50% of the bases are A or T. For example, introns are approximately 77% A or T.

Note that introns in C. elegans can be unusually short (relative to other eukaryotic introns). Roughly 75% are between 45 - 59 bases long; the majority of these short introns are either 48 or 52 bases in length. (Experiments with introns of higher eukaryotes suggest that introns shorter than about 80 bases cannot be spliced.)

Derived from Figure 1, Herman RK (1988) The Genome. In: The Nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (W. B. Wood, ed), pp 587-605. Cold Spring Harbor, New York: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

See also: Figure 3, Chapter 6 in "C. elegans II" for a more recent compilation of splice sites.