Evidence of Limited Structural Organization in Globin Intron Sequences of Messenger RNA.

The structural significance of introns in alpha and beta globin genes were evaluated in terms of the folding (or stacking) free energy of the nascent RNA sequences as obtained from secondary structure calculations. From calculations of the folding free energy of exons and introns, it was found that introns tend to have a more folded (globular) structure compared to the exon counterparts segments. The results suggest that significant biological information is present in all intronic sequences including spliceosome type introns.