Fig. 1

Schematic gene structure of chicken NRG3. Each coding exon and untranslated region is expressed as a black and open box, respectively. The shaded boxes indicate the 5′ conserved segments of intron 1 (330 bp in length). The size of each box and bar does not correspond to actual sequence length. Four blocks of duplicated exon 1 and flanking segments are shown in the upstream region of the gene (E1a/Int1a, E1b/Int1b, E1c/Int1c, and E1d/Int1d; see Table 1 for more details). Another duplicated segment found in an unknown chromosome of the Red Jungle Fowl genome (ΨNRG3; JH375293) is depicted under the schematic gene structure. The enlarged part indicates the positions where oligonucleotide primers were designed for genotyping and sequencing. A putative frameshift deletion (c. 47_48delTC) and premature stop codon are shown in light gray highlight and asterisk, respectively. The dark gray box (Int1) represents the entire intron 1