Fig. 1. (A) Linear alignment of the deduced amino sequence of ß,ß-carotene-15,15'-oxygenases of different vertebrate species. Identity is indicated in black and conserved amino acids are indicated in gray according to the PAM250 matrix. Conserved histidine residues probably involved in binding the co-factor Fe²⁺ are marked by asterisks. A putative polyene chain oxygenase family motif is underlined. Besides the zebrafish sequence, the following sequences were used: AAG15380 (human), NP067461 (mouse) and AJ271386 (chicken). (B) Color shift of bcox-expressing E. coli-strain caused by the cleavage of ß-carotene to retinal. (C) HPLC profile at 360 nm of an extract derived from a ß-carotene-synthesizing E. coli strain expressing bcox separated on HPLC-system 1. The composition of the individual retinoids is indicated in the figure.

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