Figure 3.

Sequence conservation in the first set of the alternatively spliced exons. On top, the protein sequence alignment of the alternative exons is shown. The upper sequences, termed Mhc1, Mhc3, and Mhc4, respectively, represent the variant "a" exons. Below, the comparison of the sequence identity between each exon and variant "a" and "b" of every other Mhc1 protein is shown. The graphic has to be read in columns. The higher identity between an exon listed on top and variant "a" or "b" of a certain Mhc1 protein listed on the left side has been set to 1 (red color) while the difference of the lower identity to the value of the higher identity is plotted for the other combination of exons. Thus, in every column the higher identity of the named exon to one of the variants of the other Mhc1 proteins is visualized.