THE HUMAN HOMOLOG OF A CANDIDATE MOUSE T-COMPLEX RESPONDER GENE - CONSERVED MOTIFS AND EVOLUTION WITH PUNCTUATED EQUILIBRIA

The mouse Tcp-10 gene has been established as a molecular candidate fa r the t complex responder locus which plays a central role in the tran smission ratio distortion phenotype expressed by males heterozygous fo r a t haplotype. Here we describe a comparison of the mouse and human TCP10 coding sequences. The results show that whole exons have been ad ded or eliminated from the transcripts expressed in each species, sugg esting an evolutionary process of punctuated equilibria for this gene. Two of the polypeptide regions that are most conserved between the tw o species contain specific peptide motifs. The conserved C-terminal re gion contains a unique nonapeptide repeat of unknown function and the conserved N-terminal region contains a pair of leucine zippers within a region that shows additional similarity to the coiled-coil regions o f various cytosolic polypeptides. These results are discussed in terms of the possible function of the TCP10 protein.