Fig. 7: Allelic expression of the MEST isoforms in the tammar placenta.

A Exon structures of the two MEST isoforms identified in this study and the previously described isoform. Orange, aqua and green coloured boxes represent MESTA-specific, MESTB-specific and the previously described isoform specific exons, respectively. B Primer design for the allelic expression of the MEST isoforms. The previously confirmed SNP site (Suzuki et al. 2005) was used for this study. An arrowhead represents the SNP site. Allelic expression analysis of each isoform was performed using each isoform specific forward primer and a common reverse primer. C Allelic expression of tammar MEST isoforms by direct sequencing with PCR amplification. In animal #1, clear paternal expression was observed in the TOM tissue. However, in animal #2, all MEST isoforms were expressed mono-allelically from the maternal genome in TOM tissue. MESTA was not sufficiently highly expressed in BOM tissue to determine its allelic expression.