Analysis of 3′‐untranslated regions of seven c‐myc genes reveals conserved elements prevalent in post‐transcriptionally regulated genes

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Abstract
We have characterized the complete sequence of two c-myc cDNAs from the amphibian Xenopus laevis, and could thus compare the 3′-non-coding sequences of 7 myc cDNAs from 6 species spread over 350 million years of evolution. Although the size of these sequences is heterogeneous, we identified three completely conserved sequences of 10, 11 and 12 contiguous nucleotides. We observed that two of these elements may be contained in conserved stem-loop structures previously implicated in mRNA turnover. The length of these motifs, their existence in conserved predicted structures, and their presence in regulated eukaryote mRNA with a frequency greater than predicted by chance, suggest that they are functionally important.