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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2009 Jan 1.
Published in final edited form as: Prog Neurobiol. 2007 Nov 4;84(1):1–24. doi: 10.1016/j.pneurobio.2007.10.007

Figure 1.

Figure 1

Schematic diagram of the oxytocin and vasopressin genes (top, large arrows) preprohormones (middle boxes) and peptides (bottom). Both genes are composed of three exons (shown as small solid arrows) separated by two introns. The genes are located on the same chromosome but are transcribed in opposite directions and separated by an intergenic region (IGR). The IGR length varies across species. The preprohormones contain a signal peptide (SP), Avp or Oxt, neurophysin (NP), and a glycopeptide (GP) in the case of Avp. Protein processing signals are represented with thick lines. Cysteine residues form a disulfide bond to create a cyclic six amino acid ring in both peptides. Seven out of nine amino acids are common and two amino acids (bold) are different between Avp and Oxt.