EVOLUTIONARY CONSERVATION OF CHYMOTRYPSINOGEN GENE - GENOMIC ANALYSISAND PROTEIN MODELING

Chymotrypsinogen is widely present in various animal pancreases. To st udy evolutionary relationship of chymotrypsinogen gene in species, we used a cDNA probe of human prechymotrypsinogen to investigate the spec ies distribution of chymotrypsinogen gene, and designed oligodeoxynucl eotide primers to investigate the genomic organization in the three do mains of active sites. The genomic analyses showed that chymotrypsinog en gene is evolutionary conserved in species. On the basis of the dedu ced amino acid residues, a three-dimensional model for human chymotryp sinogen was further built by computer graphics. The model showed high similarity to the X-ray crystal structure of bovine chymotrypsinogen A , thus, demonstrated that the three-dimensional structure is more cons erved in evolution than protein sequences.