The CARB analysis shows that the probability of a modern intron's presence in an ancestral gene common to the genes studied is roughly 1 percent, indicating that the vast majority of today's introns appeared subsequent to the origin of the genes. This conclusion is supported by the findings regarding placement patterns for introns within genes. It long has been observed that, in the sequences of nitrogen-containing compounds that make up our DNA genomes, introns prefer some sites more than others. The CARB study indicates that these preferences are side effects of late-stage intron gain, rather than side effects of intron-mediated gene formation.

The CARB results are based on an analysis of carefully processed data for 10 families of protein-coding genes in animals, plants, fungi and their relatives (see sidebar for details of the method used). A variety of statistical modeling, theoretical, and automated analytical approaches were used; while most were conventional, their combined application to the study of introns was novel. The CARB study also is unique in using an evolutionary model as the basis for inferring the presence of ancestral introns. The research was made possible in part by the increasing availability, over the past decade, of massive amounts of genetic sequence data.

The lead researcher is Arlin B. Stoltzfus of NIST; collaborators include Wei-Gang Qiu, formerly of CARB and the University of Mayland and now at Hunter College in New York City, and Nick Schisler, currently at Furman University, Greenville, S.C.

CARB is a cooperative venture of NIST and the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute.