Intron - Simple Illustration of An Intron and RNA Splicing

Simple Illustration of An Intron and RNA Splicing

Introns and the process of RNA splicing can be illustrated using a text example. Consider the following quotation from Groucho Marx:

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."

To make this text look more like a nucleic acid sequence, we'll simply delete all punctuation and make all of the text uppercase. This will be our "message".

OUTSIDEOFADOGABOOKISMANSBESTFRIENDINSIDEOFADOGITSTOODARKTOREAD

If there were a single intron within this sequence, it would look something like this:

OUTSIDEOFADOGABOOKISMANSBEGUITUITGLSAJSAKHDLAYSIOEYASHDKLSALKDN

KLASNDKLASKGDASJKBDNKNSKDKLSANDKNSKANDKNSAKNDKSAKLDHSDJGJASBDKN

SANDLNSMALVJOPDHVANVLNVKLSAKNFADNGKLHKNIUHSAFLSAFLFASFOLSANFLNK

FNKDSNGOIFSGHSKDHGKDHSFIABHFIHEHRFKHLKDHSUNSIUANIDAUBIOAYICMUSF

AVMASSTFRIENDINSIDEOFADOGITSTOODARKTOREAD