Figure 2.
Alignment of deduced amino acid sequences from the zebra finch FoxP2 cDNA (GenBank accession number AY395709) with three mammalian sequences (accession numbers: AF337817, human; AF512947, chimpanzee; AF339106, mouse). A, The selected region includes the positions at which two residues in the human sequence (boxes; N303 and S325) differ from other primates (Enard et al., 2002). The putative zinc finger domain (dotted underscore) is also shown. In the zebra finch, a conservative substitution of valine for isoleucine at position 350 (arrow; I350V) occurs within this domain. Four additional zebra finch substitutions (S42T, S78G, S229N, and A243S; data not shown) occur at positions outside of the currently identified protein domains.B, Selected region spans the Fox domain (solid underscore) that shows 100% identity between finch, human, and chimp. The asterisk indicates an invariant arginine at position 553 in humans that is mutated to histidine in a rare speech and language disorder (Lai et al., 2001).