Isolation and sequence determination of the chicken rhodopsin gene

A chicken genomic library was screened with a bovine opsin cDNA probe. A clone isolated under high stringency hybridization conditions contained DNA sequences highly homologous to all of the five exons of bovine and human opsin genes. Sequence comparison of the putative open reading frame in the chicken DNA fragment of 4.3 kb with bovine opsin cDNA revealed 82% identity for the nucleotide and 87% for the deduced amino acid sequence, indicating that this DNA fragment contains the complete chicken opsin gene. The position of four introns and amino acid sequences at all putative cytoplasmic loops are exactly conserved in chicken and mammals.