The human embryonic myosin heavy chain. Complete primary structure reveals evolutionary relationships with other developmental isoforms.

We have isolated a single 6021-nucleotide cDNA fragment encoding the full length of the myosin heavy chain (MHC) isoform initially expressed in developing human limb muscle. The corresponding transcript is expressed in fetal, but not adult, human muscle, and the corresponding gene maps to human chromosome 17. Comparison of the full length nucleotide sequence with that of the orthologous rat gene transcript reveals 74, 90, and 80% similarities in the 5'-untranslated, coding, and 3'-untranslated regions, respectively. To precisely quantitate the degree of nucleotide sequence divergence between the human embryonic and other developmentally regulated MHC gene transcripts, we utilize the algorithm of Perler et al. (Perler, F., Efstratiadis, A., Lomedico, P., Gilbert, W., Kolodner, R. & Dodgson, J. (1980) Cell 20, 555-566) and make use of the codon-for-codon register attainable in alignments of the MHC rod encoding cDNA fragments. The results allow reconstruction of the order and relative timing of certain gene duplication events involved in the evolution of the multimembered mammalian MHC loci. By this analysis, the principal sarcomeric MHC gene expressed in the 14-day chick embryo is shown to be more distantly related to the mammalian embryonic MHC genes than to those expressed peri- and postnatally. Attention is focused on regional patterns of MHC sequence conservation, ordered with reference to the topology of our phylogenetic tree. We present a composite map depicting the deduced evolutionary age of various primary structural subdomains of the human embryonic MHC.

Human embryonic myosin heavy chain cDNA. Interspecies sequence conservation of the myosin rod, chromosomal locus and isoform specific transcription of the gene.

A 3.6 kilobase cDNA clone coding for the human embryonic myosin heavy chain has been isolated and characterized from an expression library prepared from human fetal skeletal muscle. The derived amino acid sequence for the entire rod part of myosin shows 97% sequence homology between human and rat and a striking interspecies sequence conservation among the charged amino acid residues. The single copy gene is localized to human chromosome 17 and its expression in fetal skeletal muscle is developmentally regulated. The sequence information permits the design of isoform-specific probes for studies on the structure of the gene and its role in normal and defective human myogenesis.