Figure 1

Sequence conservation for seven of the investigated platypus regions orthologous to imprinted regions in human. Each region shown is syntenic in the platypus. The top line shows the gene structure of the region (exons represented by boxes, introns by connecting lines). Human imprint status for the genes is indicated, with paternally imprinted genes shown in blue, maternally imprinted genes shown in red and non-imprinted genes or unknown status shown in black. The percentage identity (%ID) plot over the region for human compared to dog (top panel) and platypus (bottom panel) is shown beneath the gene structure for each region. As expected, conservation is higher between human and dog than human and platypus, reflecting their divergence times. The gene coding sequences are the most highly conserved, with little or no conservation found within intronic sequences. While most regions show a high degree of conservation, there is little seen throughout the DIO3/DLK cluster.