Figure 1

Signal peptides in some members of the BMP/GDF family are highly divergent. A. Alignment of human (Homo sapiens, Hs), murine (Mus musculus, Mm) and chicken (Gallus gallus, Gg) N-terminal GDF9 sequences. Bona fide predicted signal peptides are underlined. Asterisks represent conserved amino acid positions. The right panel shows the predicted probability of being a signal peptide for each sequence, according to Phobius (using the sequences provided in the alignments). A clear sequence divergence but functional preservation is obvious for the mammalian and chicken GDF9 sequences. B. Alignment and predicted signal peptide score for human, murine and chicken N-terminal AMH sequences. Here sequence divergence is obvious even between man and mouse. C. Alignment of the human, murine and chicken N-terminal BMP15 sequences. Again sequence divergence is observed between mammals and chicken, with functional conservation, as noticed for GDF9. D. Alignment of human, murine and chicken N-terminal sequence of BMP2, displaying a high sequence similarity between mammals and chicken and even fishes (Danio rerio, Dr).