Figure 2. CERKL gene and splice-variants in human and mouse retina. A schematic representation of CERKL genes (drawn to scale), splice-variants (left panels), and expected protein products (right panels) is shown. In the splice-variants illustrations, filled boxes represent coding exons, and open boxes represent non-coding exons. Alternatively spliced exons are marked in red. In the protein products illustrations, the PH, DAGK, and CERK homology domains are indicated. The borders of each domain are marked by their amino acid positions, indicated above each protein. The breaks between exons are indicated below each protein. Protein molecular weight in kDa is shown on the right. A: Human CERKL gene and splice-variants previously identified in the human retina. Variants e and f correspond to AY690333 and AY690332 [13]. B: Mouse Cerkl gene and splice-variants found in the mature and embryonic (E14) mouse retina. Two of the mouse isoforms (isoforms d’ and g’) encode for the same short protein product. Mouse isoform a’, which is present in both adult and embryonic samples, is equivalent to human isoform a, and mouse isoform f’ is equivalent to human isoform f. Locations of PCR primers used for RT–PCR analysis and for splice-variant identification (forward primer located in exon 1 and reverse primers located in exons 2 and 14) are indicated by arrows above the schematic representation of the murine gene.