Examination of the minimal Bmp3 upstream ECR (minECR) present in all RefSeq mammals.

BLASTN (Version 2.2.26+) was used to align the M. musculus: H. sapiens CoreECR sequence to all sixteen available eutherian mammal RefSeq genomes in order to identify the Bmp3 upstream ECR shared with M. musculus. Each full-length ECR was then aligned using MUSCLE in MEGA5 [64], identifying a minimal Bmp3 upstream ECR (minECR) with a consensus length of 297 nt. The mean identity to the consensus minECR is 90% (range: 79%–97%, median: 92%); the individual nucleotide conservation is shown in Figure S2. Uppercase letters in the consensus sequence indicate 100% conservation, while lowercase letters indicate the majority nucleotide; “n” indicates no consensus nucleotide could be determined. B: Regulation of Thymidine Kinase minimal promoter (TK minP) by fragments from the region upstream of M. musculus Bmp3 in HEK293T cells. Data are mean±SEM normalized to promoter-less control. p<0.05 as determined by One-way ANOVA with post hoc Newman-Keuls correction is indicated by “a” versus promoter-less control and by “b” versus CoreECR fragment.