Figures
- Elephants and Human Color-Blind Deuteranopes Have Identical Sets of Visual Pigments

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FIGURE 1.— Oligonucleotide primers for RT-PCR amplification and 5'- and 3'-RACE of RH1, SWS1, and M/LWS opsin mRNAs. (A) All internal primers are expected to amplify the codon positions between 248 and 300 of all opsin cDNAs and the RH1-, SWS1-, and LWS-specific internal primers are expected to amplify the codon positions between 50–70 and 260–280. (B) The EcoRI and SalI sites are boxed in the forward and reverse primers, respectively, and were used for cloning the amplified products into the expression vector pMT5. A Kozak sequence (CCACC) was inserted between the EcoRI site and the initiation codon to promote translation.

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FIGURE 2.— The dark absorption spectra of the elephant RH1, SWS1, and LWS pigments. The dark-light difference spectra are shown in the insets.

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FIGURE 3.— The phylogenetic tree of some representative RH1, SWS1, and LWS pigments. The numbers after P and at the nodes refer to ${lambda}$ _max-values. Zebrafish (Danio rerio), cavefish (Astyanax fasciatus), goldfish (Carassius auratus), coelacanth (Latimeria chalamnae), frog (Xenopus laevis), salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum), pigeon (Columba livia), zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), chameleon (Anolis carolinensis), human (Homo sapiens), bovine (Bos taurus), dolphin (Tursiops truncates), mouse (Mus musculus), and elephant (Loxodonta africana) are shown. The ${lambda}$ _max-values of the ancestral SWS1 and M/LWS pigments are taken from SHI and YOKOYAMA (2003) and YOKOYAMA and RADLWIMMER (2001), respectively. Amino acid changes whose ${lambda}$ _max-shifts are not evaluated are shown in parentheses. The branch lengths are not to scale.