Monte Carlo simulations of the inside-intron recombination

Abstract

Biological genomes are divided into coding and non-coding regions. Introns are non-coding parts within genes, while the remaining non-coding parts are intergenic sequences. To study the evolutionary significance of recombination inside introns we have used two models based on the Monte Carlo method. In our computer simulations we have implemented the internal structure of genes by declaring the probability of recombination between exons. One situation when inside-intron recombination is advantageous is recovering functional genes by combining proper exons dispersed in the genetic pool of the population after a long period without selection for the function of the gene. Populations have to pass through the bottleneck, then. These events are rather rare and we have expected that there should be other phenomena giving profits from the inside-intron recombination. In fact we have found that inside-intron recombination is advantageous only in the case when after recombination, besides the recombinant forms, parental haplotypes are available and selection is set already on gametes.