Figure 4. Structural similarity among the SSGP-11A1, SSGP-11B1, and SSGP-11C2-encoding genes. A: Amino acid sequence alignment. The first 16 amino acids (italic) constitute a putative secretion signal peptide. Black residues indicate identical amino acids between at least two proteins. Gray residues represent conserved substitutions. White residues represent amino acid differences. Dashed lines indicate absence of amino acids in specific proteins. The conserved location of the intron (between F and V) is indicated by the symbols ▴ and ▾. B: Conservation in nucleotide sequence at intron/exon splicing boundaries. The alignment was made using standard program (see Experimental Protocol section). CALCYPHO represents calcyphosine, an unrelated gene from the Hessian fly. Black areas represent residues identical at least 3 sequences. Intron splicing donor and acceptor are bold and underlined and indicated by arrows. C: Conservation in the promoter region. Putative “TATA” box is bold and underlined and indicated by arrows.