Primary Structure and Genetic Variants

The first partial protein sequence of turkey gizzard CP (Vancompernolle et al., 1990) and the complete chicken sequence derived from the cDNA (Takahashi and Nadal-Ginard, 1991) revealed a novel primary se- 

Complete sequences of rat aorta (Nishida et al., 1993) as well as of pig and mouse stomach CP (Strasser et al., 1993) have revealed a high degree of conservation between species (Fig. 3 and Table I). A notable feature of the C-terminal third of CP is the presence of 

FIGURE 3 Comparison of the amino acid sequences of CPs from different species. The amino acid positions are numbered according to the chicken alpha (upper lane) and rat acidic (lower lane) sequences. Dots represent identical residues, horizontal bars indicate gaps introduced into the sequences for maximal alignment, and asterisks represent incomplete sequences. 

Gimona, unpublished). Other reports have revealed the existence of more acidic CP variants at the cDNA level (Strasser et al., 1993 Applegate et ah, 1994) (Fig. 3), but neither of these groups was able to detect the shorter cDNAs corresponding to that described earlier for chicken gizzard (Takahashi and Nadal-Ginard, 

TABLE I Molecular Masses, Isoelectric Points, and Number of Amino Acid Residues for Sequenced Calponins 

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