Fig. 2. Ciona Mesp gene. A molecular phylogenetic tree generated by the neighbor-joining method based on the alignment of the bHLH domain indicating orthology between Mesp proteins of two Ciona species (enclosed by boxes) and other animals. The number on each node indicates the percentage of times that a node was supported in 1000 bootstrap pseudoreplications. The tree is shown as a bootstrap consensus tree (cut-off value=50%). E proteins of Drosophila (daughterless), C. intestinalis (Ci-E12/E47) and humans (TFE2) are used as outgroups. Proteins of animals other than ascidians are shown by their accession number, species abbreviation and protein name. Species abbreviations are as follows: HS, Homo sapiens; MM, Mus musculus; DR, Danio rerio; DM, Drosophila melanogaster; Ci, Ciona intestinalis; Cs, Ciona savignyi.