Phylogenetic relationships among vertebrate visual pigments
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1Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Osaka University, Toyonaka, Japan.
Vision Research
|December 1, 1994
Abstract:
Genomic DNA fragments in exon 4 of chicken, goldfish and salmon visual pigments were amplified by polymerase chain reaction, using oligonucleotide mixtures as primers, and hypothetical phylogenetic trees were drawn up from the deduced amino acid sequences. The results suggest that vertebrate visual pigments have evolved along at least five lines, and that these lines diverged from an ancestral gene before the bony fishes diverged from the rest of the higher vertebrates.