The chicken tropomyosin 1 gene generates nine mRNAs by alternative splicing.

Skeletal muscle beta-tropomyosin, smooth muscle alpha-tropomyosin, and a low molecular weight fibroblast tropomyosin are generated by alternatively splicing RNA transcripts of the chicken tropomyosin 1 (TM 1) gene (Forry-Schaudies, S., Maihle, N. J., and Hughes, S. H. (1990) J. Mol. Biol. 211; 321-330). Two novel tropomyosin cDNAs that derive from mRNAs of the TM 1 gene have been isolated from a chicken embryo brain cDNA library. Brain cDNA BRT-1 is 2.2 kilobases in length and encodes 283 amino acids. It is identical to skeletal muscle beta-tropomyosin from amino acids 1 to 258. The sequence 3' of this point is unique to BRT-1; a comparison to genomic sequence indicates that a new carboxyl-terminal exon is used to generate this sequence. 1.4-kilobase brain cDNA BRT-2 contains sequences found in both fibroblast cDNA FT-beta (5'-end) and skeletal muscle cDNA SKT-beta (3'-end). RNase and S1 nuclease assays using RNA samples from leg muscle, gizzard, fibroblasts, and brain indicate that the TM 1 gene expresses four additional tropomyosin RNAs by alternately splicing previously characterized exons. These results demonstrate that the chicken TM 1 gene encodes nine tropomyosin RNAs through the use of two promoters, two internal exons that are mutually exclusive, and three 3'-exons. Implications for the regulation of alternative splicing are discussed.