Fig. 4.—

Quantification of mRNA levels of all vertebrate globins (except Hb) in different tissues of the Chinese softshell turtle (gray) and the western painted turtle (black). Absolute copy numbers of mRNA were obtained using qRT-PCR experiments. Mb (A), Ngb (B), and GbE (C) showed a tissue-specific expression pattern in striated muscle, neuronal tissues + kidney and eye, respectively. GbX (D), Cygb (E), and GbY (F) showed a widespread expression in different tissues with lower levels. Adgb (G), which was only tested in western painted turtle, is expressed in all tissues analyzed. Logarithmic scaled figures are given in supplementary fig. S3, Supplementary Material online.