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. 1985 Feb 25;13(4):1223–1237. doi: 10.1093/nar/13.4.1223

The complete sequence of the chicken alpha-cardiac actin gene: a highly conserved vertebrate gene.

K S Chang, K N Rothblum, R J Schwartz
PMCID: PMC341068  PMID: 3855241

Abstract

We sequenced the entire chicken alpha-cardiac actin gene. A single intron was positioned 20 bp upstream from the initiation ATG codon in the 5' non-coding region while the coding region was interrupted by 5 introns at amino acid positions 41/42, 150, 204, 267, and 327/328. Sequencing allowed the first comparison of the alpha-cardiac and alpha-skeletal actin transcriptional promoters. These highly G+C rich promoters share two regions of homology which are found at position -134 (10 bp) and -296 (12 bp) in the alpha-cardiac actin promoter. A smaller 9 bp motif (CCGCGCCGG) homologous to the -134 sequence was detected before, between and after the TATA and CAAT boxes of the alpha-cardiac actin gene. The polyadenylation signal (AATAAA) was located 156 bp downstream from the translation termination codon. The complete length of the alpha-cardiac actin mRNA excluding the poly A tail is 1370 nucleotides. The 3' noncoding transcribed portion of the chicken alpha-cardiac actin gene was found to be extraordinarily conserved when compared to the human and rat alpha-cardiac actin mRNA sequences.

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Selected References

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