International Mammalian Genome Society

D11 Comparative Sequence Analysis of the Caltractin Region in Man, Mouse and Fugu

Marc Botcherby, E. Vithana and M. S. Clark. HGMP Resource Centre, Hinxton Hall, Hinxton, Cambridge UK CB10 1SB

The caltractin region has already been the subject of comparative analysis in Mouse and Human (ftp://www.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk - human http://genome.imb-jena.de) (see poster by R Bate et al.). This study has revealed a great deal, both in terms of gene comparisons and analysis of the non-coding regions. Putative novel genes were identified which were shown to be expressed and candidate regulatory elements were highlighted.

However the number of similarities between man and mouse in this region is considerable and it is not feasible to subject all the identified conserved non-coding elements to experimental analysis. It was decided to examine the same region in a more distant vertebrate: Fugu rubripes in order to highlight non-coding regions over a large evolutionary distance (400 million years). The continued presence of such elements over the course of evolution deems them crucial to gene action and therefore prioritise them for functional experiments. To this end a genomic clone containing Fugu caltractin was sequenced and analysed. Comparative analysis of specific gene regions, across a number of different species greatly enhances our ability to elucidate gene structure and genomic organisation with the ultimate goal of fully interpreting the human sequence.