[A novel conservative structure found in the carp mitochondrial tRNA(phe) gene]

A nucleotide sequence for the tRNA(phe) gene of Carp mitochondria was determined. Sequence data comparisons made among the whale, human, Xenopus laevis, bovine, mouse, chicken and carp, showed that a novel conservative structure was found in the D. stem (dihydrouridine stem), which was known had variant nucleotides in any other vertebrate mitochondrial tRNA and cytoplasmic tRNA genes. This conservative structures contains 13 bp. When we compared the front 7 bp of the conservative structure with the eukaryotic RNA Pol III recognitive A domain, we found these two kinds of different species had partly homologue. As the mitochondrial tRNA(phe) gene is located between the displacement loop and mitochondrial rRNA gene, we inferred that the novel conservative structure might have some extra interesting functions.