Nucleotide Sequences of Pigeon Feather Keratin Genes

Abstract

We analyzed two pigeon feather keratin clones from a cosmid pigeon genomic library. Each of the clones contained three feather keratin genes that had the same general structure: a 5^′ non-coding region separated by an intron, a protein-coding region encoding a protein of 100 amino acids, and a 3^′ non-coding region. Length and transcriptional organization of the genes were variable. The length variation, about 1.2–3.7 kb, was mainly due to the difference in the length of the 3^′ non-coding region, and the longer genes had opposite transcriptional organization in contrast to the shorter genes. The nucleotide sequences of the coding region were very similar among the six genes but not the same.

Keywords::

• Pigeon
• Feather keratin genes
• Nucleotide sequencing
• Gene arrangement

Database Accession No::

• AB017903
• AB017904
• AB017902
• AB017905
• AB017906

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to Dr S. Narise, Department of Chemistry, Josai University for helpful discussion and critical reading of the manuscript.