Molecular Biology and Evolution, Vol 15, 284-292, Copyright © 1998 by Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution
KD Long and JM Salbaum
Immediate-early genes are part of a cellular response mechanism that reacts
to biochemical, electrical, pharmacological, and physiological stimuli as
well as changes in behavioral state. In the brain, immediate- early
genes-such as egr-1 have been used as markers for neuronal activity. These
markers could be invaluable in studies that utilize the chick-quail
chimaera system to investigate neural components of behavior. Therefore, we
decided to clone avian homologs of immediate- early genes to allow an
expression analysis in behavioral paradigms and to determine the degree of
conservation among diverse species. We report in this study the cloning of
the ZENK gene, an egr-1 homolog, from chicken, quail, zebrafinch, and
canary. We show that the coding region of this gene is highly conserved and
follows established phylogenetic relationships. In situ hybridization
demonstrates that the expression pattern is also conserved among species.
We further demonstrate that there are regions in the 3' untranslated area
of the ZENK gene that are as highly conserved as the protein-coding region
and that may play a role in postranscriptional regulatory mechanisms of
ZENK gene expression.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Evolutionary conservation of the immediate-early gene ZENK
Neurosciences Institute, San Diego, California 92121, USA. klong@nsi.edu
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