Abstract
THE α chain of rabbit haemoglobin from a single rabbit does not always have a unique primary structure. Von Ehrenstein1 reported at least six positions in the α chain where alternative amino-acids can occur (Fig. 1); he suggested this variance was caused by translational ambiguity, rather than polymorphic alleles or multiple non-allelic genes. Analyses of similar variance in the a chain of goat2, horse (ref. 3 and personal communication by J. B. Clegg) and mouse haemoglobins4 and in the γ chain of human foetal haemoglobin5 indicate occurrence of non-allelic genes for these chains, but the variants in the β chain of adult human haemoglobin behave as true allelic genes6. We feel that the variants in the α chain of rabbits are linked to form two distinct linked sets which segregate in mendelian fashion, suggesting that the variance in rabbits is the result of polymorphic alleles of a single α chain gene.
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References
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HUNTER, T., MUNRO, A. Allelic Variants in the Amino-acid Sequence of the α Chain of Rabbit Haemoglobin. Nature 223, 1270–1272 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1038/2231270a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/2231270a0
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