Fig. 1. Amino acid sequence alignment of all known salmonid myoD family members with a myoD orthologue in the cephalochordate-amphioxus (amphi-myoD1). Accession numbers are identical to those described in phylogeny methodology. Within the alignment, dots mark residues identical to smyoD1a and dashes indicate a gap. Below the alignment, asterisks show residues conserved globally and colons highlight conserved amino acid substitutions. The basic (red underlined) and helix-loop-helix (blue underlined) regions are highly conserved. Also shown is the cysteine–histidine rich region (green underlined) and helix-III domain, where residues identical and different to smyoD1a are respectively highlighted yellow and red. A highly conserved region present in vertebrate myoD genes, (but not other MRFs and less so with amphi-myoD) is shown in bold italics on smyoD1a.