Previous workers have shown that mammals have tyrosinase and tyrosinase related proteins (TRPs) that share common structural domains, all of which are not present in microbial tyrosinases. We report here the deduced amino acid sequence of a TRP from fish that is highly homologous to mammalian TRP‐1. Examination of the structures of these vertebrate tyrosinases and TRPs shows that, aside from the conserved cysteine‐rich and histidine‐rich domains previously noted, there are a large number of conserved prolines and glycines, leading to an abundance of turns and few conserved helical regions. These tyrosinases and TRP‐1s also have in their cytosolic tails a consensus sequence that is not present in any other protein. It is proposed that this sequence may participate in directing these proteins to the mela