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Figure 3 | BMC Evolutionary Biology

Figure 3

From: Function and evolution of the serotonin-synthetic bas-1 gene and other aromatic amino acid decarboxylase genes in Caenorhabditis

Figure 3

C. elegans bas-1 cDNA sequences. (A) Consensus cDNA sequence and translation for C05D2.4/bas-1, based on the most common splice form. Nucleotide numbering is shown on the left side and amino acid numbering on the right side of the sequence. SL1 spliced leader sequence is overlined in blue in the top line. Intron locations are indicated with blue arrowheads; the phase at all intron locations is 0 (between codons; see also Fig 6). The conserved lysine (K) pyridoxal 5-phosphate binding site at amino acid 343 is boxed in black. Red amino acids in the predicted Bas-1 protein (T286, D292, H309, D311, S336, K343, K357, V378, R393, and W401) are identical to those shown to be essential for rat AADC function [5, 41, 42]. Possible phosphorylation sites that are absolutely conserved in known DDC and HisDC proteins are boxed in green (Y37, S149, S229, S230). The polyadenylation signal in the final line is underlined. Mutations found in bas-1 alleles are indicated with the allele designation and the changed base over the wildtype sequence. The allele tm351 deletion, which removes the entire second exon, is indicated by a red line over the missing sequence. The wildtype cDNA sequence shown is consistent with our RT-PCR clones (primers SL1B, C05D2-B), those we sequenced from the ORFeome project (from predicted translation start to stop), and C. elegans EST project 'YK clones' ends (used to determine the 3' end, including the site of polyadenylation). (B) Alternatively spliced 27 bp exon and surrounding genomic sequence in C. elegans and C. briggsae. The additional exon is found in a fraction of C. elegans bas-1 transcripts, and the sequence is conserved in genomic sequence from C. briggsae as shown. [We did not isolate a cDNA containing this exon among our C. briggsae bas-1 cDNAs, S. DePaul & C. Loer, unpublished results.] Predicted translation of the exon is shown above or below the nucleotide sequence. Consensus splice signals are overlined in blue, and identical nucleotides are indicated by vertical lines between the two nucleotide sequences.

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