Phylogenetic analysis of proteins with 24 ankyrin repeats. The phylogenetic tree was constructed for all known proteins with 24 ankyrin repeats for which sufficient sequence information is available from GenBank. Human tankyrase is a telomere-associated protein with 24 ankyrin repeats but without a spectrin-binding domain (Smith et al., 1998). It serves as an out-group sequence in this analysis. After aligning the cDNA sequence segments encoding the 24 ankyrin repeats using the multiple alignment feature of the MacDNASIS Pro 3.0 program package (Hitachi Software, South San Francisco, CA) (Higgins–Sharp algorithm), a rooted phylogenetic tree was constructed using the DNAMLK and DRAWGRAM programs of the PHYLIP program package.