A novel Giraffidae-specific interspersed repeat with a microsatellite, originally found in an intron of a ruminant paralogous p97bcnt gene
The ruminant-specific p97bcnt gene (bcntp97) is a paralogous gene that includes a region derived from a retrotransposable element 1 (RTE-1). The region comprises an exon (RTE-1 exon) encoding 325 amino acids in the middle of the p97bcnt protein. To understand how the bcntp97 paralog evolved, we examined its organization in several ruminants. We found a 700-base pair (bp) insert in the 5Vintron of the RTE- 1 exon in giraffe bcntp97. This insert is missing in the corresponding regions of bovine