The N-termini of the pre-eALAS protein from mouse, human, and rat.

The downward arrow indicates mitochondrial processing peptidase (MPP) cleavage of the signal peptide.16 The reported cleavage is estimated to be within the boxed region. Horizontal bars show amino acids affected by alternative splicing: 15 amino acids (positions 61-75) for mouse eALAS24 and 37 amino acids (positions 102-138) for human eALAS.25 The bent arrow marks the N-terminus of the functional protein expressed from plasmid pTAD-ALAS2,27 and the upward arrow marks the N-terminus for a functional rat eALAS in vitro.28