First cadmium metallothionein like gene (PMCd1) from a ciliate, Paramecium sp. and a novel cadmium inducible metallothionein (TMCd1) gene has been identified and sequenced from the locally isolated ciliate; Tetrahymena tropicalis lahorensis isolated from industrial wastewater. Both the genes (PMCd1 and TMCd1) are intronless, encoding 612 and 471 nucleotides respectively, with TGA as the stop codon and TAA coding for glutamine. The coding region of PMCd1 comprises 203 amino acids, including 37 cysteine residues with a conserved structural pattern arranged in 17 cys-x-y-cys, 1 cys-cys and cys...