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. 1984 Jun;3(6):1301–1306. doi: 10.1002/j.1460-2075.1984.tb01966.x

Amino acid sequence of the carboxy-terminal part of an acidic type I cytokeratin of molecular weight 51 000 from Xenopus laevis epidermis as predicted from the cDNA sequence.

W Hoffmann, J K Franz
PMCID: PMC557512  PMID: 6204859

Abstract

The DNA sequence of a clone from a cDNA library made from Xenopus laevis skin is described. This sequence represents the 3'-terminal end of an mRNA which codes for an epidermal cytokeratin polypeptide of mol. wt. 51 000 of the acidic (type I) subfamily as identified by hybridization-selection of mRNAs, followed by gel electrophoretic identification of the polypeptides synthesized by translation in vitro. The partial amino acid sequence of the amphibian cytokeratin shows strong similarity to type I cytoskeletal keratins from human (mol. wt. 50 000) and murine (mol. wt. 59 000) epidermis. In the non alpha-helical tail region the human and the non-mammalian (Xenopus) keratins are more similar to each other than to the murine protein, indicating that the former are equivalent cytokeratin polypeptides and belonging to a special subclass of type I keratin polypeptides devoid of glycine-rich regions in the carboxy-terminal portion. The evolutionary conservativity of the genes coding for cytokeratins is discussed.

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Selected References

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