MHH conceived the study, carried out bioinformatic analysis and sequence alignment, and wrote the manuscript.
Choi KC carried out the whole studies, participated in the sequence alignment and wrote the article.
JMD performed characterization of the shared single copy genes, manual curation of EST-based alignments, phylogenetic analysis of EST-based alignment and wrote the manuscript.
We discarded self-alignments, and wrote a list of perl scripts to reinsert the high-copy repeats back to these alignments.
Konrad Sachse has done the sequence alignments and written the parts of the manuscript concerning molecular biology and veterinary aspects, and also participated in PCR analysis.
SE carried out the histochemical and quantitative GUS assays, the cloning of construct ppcA-PRFtΔIntron-DRFt, the sequence alignments and wrote the manuscript.
ID participated in the design of the experiments, performed the majority of the experiments, participated in the sequence alignments and wrote the manuscript.
TF participated in the analysis of the data, the sequence alignment and writing of the manuscript.
LA has contributed to the interpretation and presentation of the results, has written the section Word alignment and contributed writing to several other sections.
SJM carried out the sequence alignments, analyses and wrote the manuscript.
YZ carried out computational studies, including comparative genomics, sequence alignment, phylogenetic analysis and wrote the manuscript.
