Cloning and sequencing of chicken thrombospondin

Thrombospondin is a multifunction adhesive protein with the ability to bind proteoglycans, cell surface receptors, other proteins, and calcium ions. Several sequence motifs for some of these interactions have been identified in human thrombospondin. To evaluate the potential functional significance of these sequences and to begin a study of the evolution of thrombospondin, we have isolated and sequenced thrombospondin cDNA clones from a chicken embryo library. Comparison of the chicken and human sequences reveals that the NH2-terminal heparin-binding domains are only 34% identical. By contrast, the type 3 repeats and the COOH-terminal domains are 80 and 82% identical, respectively, when comparing human and chicken sequences. Potential cell recognition sequences of RGD and VTCG are conserved, with the chicken sequence containing an additional copy of the VTCG sequence. Whereas substitutions occur in the two potential heparin-binding motifs that have human counterparts, the chicken sequence contains a third potential heparin-binding motif. The results indicate that the evolutionary constraints on the various types of cell-binding motifs may be quite different.