Figure 1

Highly conserved vertebrate RPP. (A) A schematic representation of the rhodopsin gene, which consists of 5′ upstream sequence (5′ US), the proximal promoter (RPP, black box), the transcription initiation site (+1) and 5 exons (white boxes). (B) Sequence logo representation of an alignment of 33 vertebrate proximal promoters. Approximately 200 bp around the NRE were aligned using CLUSTALW and logos created using WEBLogo3.0. The species used included seven primates, five rodents, one erinaceid, two lagomorphs, three ungulates, one camelid, one loxodonta, two carnivores, one cetacean, one tenrec, one megabat, two marsupials, one monotreme, one reptile, two birds and two Xenopus. Rhodopsin promoters from fish did not fit this alignment.