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Fig. 2 | Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences

Fig. 2

From: Diversification and domain evolution of molluskan metallothioneins: a mini review

Fig. 2

A schematic representation to suggest the revised hypothesis including the newly proposed evolutionary paths (thickened arrows) for the divergence of MTs in the molluskan lineage. For MT abbreviations and species, refer to Additional file 1: Table S1. Ancestral β-domain-MT has been duplicated to early β1β1- (eventually to αβ1), β2β2- and β2β1-structured MTs and then further diverged into various shapes of extant MTs in the bivalve and gastropoda classes through domain duplication and/or aa substitutions in species/lineage-specific fashion. For MT isoforms with more than two metal-binding domains, the presumed duplicated domains are underlined with either a solid line (for homologous duplication giving rise to tandem array of domains with high sequence similarity) or dashed line (for heterologous duplication resulting in domains sharing little sequence similarity). Representative species examples for each MT type are noted below the schematic representation

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