An Expectation-Maximization Algorithm for Analysis of Evolution of Exon-Intron Structure of Eukaryotic Genes

We propose a detailed model of evolution of exon-intron structure of eukaryotic genes that takes into account gene-specific intron gain and loss rates, branch-specific gain and loss coefficients, invariant sites incapable of intron gain, and rate variability of both gain and loss which is gamma-distributed across sites. We develop an expectation-maximization algorithm to estimate the parameters of this model, and study its performance using simulated data.

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