For our project we chose to do an analysis of skeletal muscle proteins to establish the phylogenetic relationship between 6 species which are deer, elk, caribou, bear, moose and chicken. How mammals (deer, elk, moose, bear and caribou) and birds (chicken) differ in their skeletal muscle proteins?
One research article provides a good insight on this question. Alpha-skeletal actin is a very important protein for the structure and function of many animals thereby, the expression of it in early stages of development is essential. In the experiment the expression of alpha-skeletal actin gene was examined in the development stages of five different species. Two of them were chicken and mouse. Since mouse is a mammal it provides us with a good idea of how close mammals are to birds. The skeletal muscles of a chicken and mouse embryos were examined to see if they both are expressing the alpha-skeletal actin gene.
It was concluded that the alpha-skeletal actin gene were expressed in all of the five species which indicate similarities between mammals and birds in their skeletal muscle proteins. It was further concluded that the regulation of the alpha-skeletal actin gene and actin isoforms are highly affected by factors like growth factors and many others. Even though the research experiment doesn’t directly compare skeletal muscle proteins from deer, elk, bear, caribou, moose, and chicken. It certainly does offer us some information about the shared skeletal muscle proteins between the 6 species we are going to be looking at.
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