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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1981 Jun;78(6):3521–3525. doi: 10.1073/pnas.78.6.3521

Sequence homology between RNAs encoding rat alpha-fetoprotein and rat serum albumin.

L L Jagodzinski, T D Sargent, M Yang, C Glackin, J Bonner
PMCID: PMC319601  PMID: 6167988

Abstract

We have determined the sequences of the recombinant DNA inserts of three bacterial plasmid cDNA clones containing most of the rat alpha a-fetoprotein mRNA. The resultant nucleotide sequence of alpha-fetoprotein was exhaustively compared to the nucleotide sequence of the mRNA encoding rat serum albumin. These two mRNAs have extensive homology (50%) throughout and the same intron locations. The amino acid sequence of rat alpha-fetoprotein has been deduced from the nucleotide sequence, and its comparison to rat serum albumin's amino acid sequence reveals a 34% homology. The regularly spaced positions of the cysteines found in serum albumin are conserved in rat alpha-fetoprotein, indicating that these two proteins may have a similar secondary folding structure. These homologies indicate that alpha-fetoprotein and serum albumin were derived by duplication of a common ancestral gene and constitute a gene family.

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Selected References

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