Has anyone ever seen or heard of a gene having GTA (valine) as a start codon, instead of ATG, in eukaryotes? My professor and I have been working on getting the full cDNA sequence to the chicken IL16 gene, and our start codon appears to be valine instead of the usual methionine. As you can imagine, we are both stumped as to how this could be. Any ideas are appreciated :)
-Colleen