Conserved Alternative Splicing and Expression Patterns of Arthropod N-Cadherin
Figure 3
Conservation of amino acid sequences encoded by MEs.
(A) Predicted amino acid sequences derived from MEs in five arthropod genomes. Conserved amino acid sequences for ME-13 pairs are shown in bold. Some occur as mutually exclusive for ME-13a (in the orange background) or for ME-13b (in the red background). Amino acid identities (%) between alternative pairs of MEs in Drosophila are indicated. Lengths of ME-7's, ME-13's and ME-18's are, respectively, 63, 54–55 and 68–70 amino acids. DRE and DxNDNxPxF constitute putative Ca2+-binding motifs. EGF-like Ca2+-binding cystine-rich (EGF-CA) and transmembrane domains are indicated. (B) Phylogenetic trees of the MEs based on predicted amino acid sequences. Apis lacks MEs for ME-13s and ME-18s, but has single exons that resemble, respectively, ME-13a and ME-18a. While each tree is drawn to scale, the branch lengths from different trees are not comparable.