Structure of the chicken link protein gene: exons correlate with the protein domains.

The structure of the chicken link protein gene has been determined from a series of genomic clones that cover the entire coding region as well as the complete 3'-untranslated region and a small portion of the 5'-untranslated region. The gene is greater than 80 kilobase pairs long and is present in a single copy in the chicken genome. The link protein gene contains at least five exons with four encoding the entire protein. The domain of link protein that has homologies with immunoglobulin-like proteins and the tandemly repeated hyaluronic acid binding domains are each encoded by separate exons. The exon-intron structure indicates that the link protein gene may have arisen by exon duplication and exon shuffling.