MAMMALIAN CALPONIN - IDENTIFICATION AND EXPRESSION OF GENETIC-VARIANTS

Calponin is a smooth muscle specific, actin-, tropomyosin- and calmodu lin-binding protein thought to be involved in some way in the regulati on or modulation of contraction. Here we describe the cloning and bact erial expression of two calponin species from murine and porcine smoot h muscle tissues. Primary and secondary structural analyses of the ded uced amino acid sequences revealed a high degree of homology to avian calponin with the exception of a short and variable C-terminal segment . The sequence data demonstrate that the two mammalian calponin varian ts do not arise via alternative splicing but are encoded by different genes.