Exons

Exons are a sequence of DNA or RNA that codes information for protein synthesis. In other words, exons are the coding regions of an gene that are expressed. They are the segments of genes that are transcribed into mRNA and then translated into protein.

Exons can be thought of as the opposite of introns, which are non-coding regions of a gene. While introns are removed from the mRNA sequence during RNA splicing, exons remain and are joined together to form the final mRNA molecule that is translated into a protein.

Function

The primary function of exons is to provide the genetic code for proteins. Each exon contains a specific sequence of DNA bases that corresponds to a particular amino acid. During protein synthesis, the exons are transcribed into mRNA, which is then read by the ribosome to assemble the protein.

Exons also play a role in alternative splicing, a process that allows a single gene to code for multiple proteins. During alternative splicing, different combinations of exons are joined together to create different mRNA molecules, which are then translated into different proteins.

Discovery

Exons were first discovered in the 1970s by Richard J. Roberts and Phillip A. Sharp, who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1993 for their discovery. They found that genes in eukaryotes are not contiguous strings but contain introns that are spliced out of the mRNA before it is used to produce a protein.

See also

• Intron
• Gene
• Protein synthesis
• Alternative splicing
• RNA splicing

References

Exons Resources
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