Figure 1

Similarity between Mars and HURP is higher than that between Vulcan and HURP. (A) Diagrams show conserved domains in HURP, Mars and Vulcan (Vlc). The sizes of the GKAP domains in HURP, Mars and Vlc are 297 (301–597), 315 (452–766) and 323 (266–588) amino acids, respectively. The amino acid sequences of the HURP orthologues in human, mouse, rat and chicken were aligned to identify conserved domains other than the GKAP domain. Two conserved domains, a and b with similarities of 79% and 92%, were found using the ClustalW program. Similarly, three conserved domains in Mars (c-e) and Vlc (f-h) among Drosophila species including melanogaster, simulans, pseudoobscura and virilis were identified. Similarities of these three domains in Mars and Vlc ranged from 57% to 73% and from 90% to 95%, respectively. Paired amino acid sequences of domains a/c and b/d are shown. Conserved amino acids in the HURP or Mars orthologues are indicated by red and blue letters (see sequence alignments in panel B). The highly conserved amino acids among the eight species are boxed. Putative destruction boxes, RXXL, are underlined. (B) The conserved domains in the HURP orthologues from vertebrates (human, mouse, rat and chicken) and in the Mars orthologues from Drosophila species, including melanogaster (mel), simulans (sim), pseudoobscura (pseu) and virilis (vir) were separately identified using the CustalW program. Sequences of the conserved domains were aligned manually to identify highly conserved amino acid residues (boxed). Conserved amino acids in the HURP and Marsorthologues are indicated by red and blue letters.