Molecular Cloning and Bioinformatics Analysis of Duck MRFs Gene Family Coding Domain Sequences

Myogenesis in skeletal muscle is a cascade of developmental events, whose initiation involves the MRFs family of the myogenic regulatory factors. Comparing the characterization of MRFs family members and their deduced proteins is necessary to know the reasons of their different role in muscle development. In order to investigate the reasons why MRFs members have different roles in duck myogenesis, the genes MyoD1, Myf5, MyoG and MRF4 in the duck were cloned, and were analyzed using bioinformatics knowledge. The result shows that these four sequences share a high homology with other organisms both at the nucleotide level and at the amino acid level. All of the duck four transcription factors have a consensus bHLH domain, and the domain shares a high homology with the other sequences. In addition to the bHLH region, the quantitative distribution of the alpha helixes, random coils, extended strands and phosphorylated sites at the carboxyl-termini and amino-termini are different. We conclude that these differentiations among the duck four myogenic regulatory factors may be linked to their distinct functions.