Figure 1

Alternative transcripts of chTERT identified in three avian cell line. At the top, we show a schematic diagram of telomerase protein, showing major conserved protein motifs, including reverse transcriptase domains 1 and 2 and the A, B, C, D and E motifs, and of the chTERT gene, with its 16 exons shown as gray boxes. The PCR primers are shown as arrows below the diagram. Each alternative transcript is shown on the right, with the splicing event depicted as a clear gray box for insertion of the exon cassette; dark lines indicate deletion, black boxes indicate intron retention and white boxes indicate the deletion of part of an exon. Positions of premature stop codons (PTCs) are indicated by black triangles. On the left, we show the name of the spliced transcripts, the presence or absence of a PTC with its position relative to the 3' exon-exon junction and represented as a function of cell line. The name of the transcript is indicated on the left and is coded as follow: iXec for insertion of exon cassette X, dXf for full deletion of exon X, dXp for partial deletion of exon X, iXp for retention of part of intron X and iXf for insertion of full intron X.