Analysis of the closely linked adult chicken alpha-globin genes in recombinant DNAs.

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Abstract
Recombinant bacteriophage (from a library of chicken chromosomal DNA fragments inserted into .lambda. Charon 4A) were isolated, which contain the coding information for both of the adult chicken .alpha.-globin genes, .alpha.A and .alpha.D. One of these recombinant phage also contains an as yet unidentified embryonic .alpha.-like globin gene sequence. The 2 adult genes are encoded on the same DNA strand and are separated by approximately 2.4 kilobase pairs with the arrangement of the genes relative to the direction of transcription being 5''-.alpha.D-.alpha.A-3''. EM R-loop visualization experiments demonstrate that both .alpha.-globin genes contain 2 intervening sequences of similar size in a manner analogous to the structure observed in the mouse .alpha.-globin gene. The linkage of the 2 highly divergent chicken adult .alpha.-globin genes further underscores the principle that chromosomal clustering of families of developmentally related genes may be a general phenomenon in higher eukaryotic gene sequence arrangement.