A human descendant of the chicken cardiac morphogenic protein ES/130

We report a striking amino-acid sequence similarity between a chicken extracellular matrix protein termed ES/130, involved in early cardiac morphogenesis [Rezaee et al., J. Biol. Chem. 268 (1993) 14404-14411], and a novel human protein termed CG-1, isolated from the glycoprotein fraction of peripheral blood leukocytes [Print et al., Gene 144 (1994) 221-228]. These two proteins may be homologues which have evolved over a period of 270 x 10(6) years.