Elucidation of the 5' End of the Zebrafish

Type II collagens (Col2) play a vital role in the formation of many vertebrate structures, such as the skeleton, the notochord, and many other tissues. This study sets out to clarify the start of the genomic annotation around one of the zebrafish orthologs of vertebrate Type II collagen, col2a1b , as it sits at the telomeric end of chromosome 11 and up till this point has missing coding and non-coding exons form the published databases. We have used bioinformatic tools to elucidate this missing genomic sequence and analyze for basal promoter elements that designate the true first exon of col2a1b .