Contrasting patterns of sequence divergence and base composition between Drosophila introns and intergenic regions

Two non-coding DNA classes, introns and intergenic regions, of Drosophila melanogaster exhibit contrasting evolutionary patterns. GC content is significantly higher in intergenic regions and affects their degree of nucleotide variability. Divergence is positively correlated with recombination rate in intergenic regions, but not in introns. We argue that these differences are due to different selective constraints rather than mutational or recombinational mechanisms.