The Biological Bulletin, Vol 195, Issue 3 251-254, Copyright © 1998 by Marine Biological Laboratory

RESEARCH NOTES

Consensus Translational Initiation Sites of Marine Invertebrate Phyla

R. V. Mankad, A. A. Gimelbrant and T. S. Mcclintock
Department of Physiology, University of Kentucky, 800 Rose St., Lexington, Kentucky 40536-0298

The efficiency of translational initiation depends upon the sequence context surrounding the AUG codon (1, 2, 3). A purine at position -3 contributes critically to context, but other neighboring nucleotides are also important, Nucleotide frequencies at these neighboring positions vary among distant taxa (4, 5). We have analyzed the translational initiation sites of cnidarian, echinoderm, molluscan, annelid, and crustacean sequences in nucleotide sequence databases. These taxa conform to the pattern of a strong preference for a purine at -3, but the frequencies of nucleotides at neighboring positions are characteristic for each taxon. The consensus translational initiation sequences of the marine invertebrate taxa are also different from those of vertebrates and single-celled eukaryotes. These consensus sequences are useful guides for predicting translational initiation sites in cDNA clones.

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