Fig. 1. CACNA1D sequence conservation along a simplified phylogenetic tree of animals (Metazoa).

A Representation of Metazoa phylogeny. Classes and representative branches included in our sequence alignment are indicated with arrows and solid lines. Sponges, which are located outside the “true animal” or Eumetazoa class, diversified much earlier in evolution and are excluded from our alignment (branch in dash line). B Examples of sequence alignment of representative species: functionally conserved S4 helices of domain I and the beginning of the variable pore loop between the first two conserved cysteines. Sequences are colored by similarity, identical amino acids and very similar ones are colored in blue, dissimilar ones in red.