Multigene families

Nagao, R.T., Czamecka, E., Gurley, W.B., Schoffl, F. Key, J.L. (1985). Genes for low-molecular-weight heat shock proteins of soybeans Sequence analysis of a multigene family. Molecular and Cellular Biology, 5, 3417-28. 

Matsunami H. and Buck L. (1997). A multigene family encoding a diverse array of putative pheromone receptors in mammals. Cell 90, 775-784. 

Ryba N. and Tirindelli R. (1997). A new multigene family of putative pheromone receptors. Neuron 19, 371-379. 

Le Novere, N., Changeux, J.P. Molecular evolution of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor an example of multigene family in excitable cells. J. Mol. Evol. 40 155, 1995. 

Arnheim, N. (1983) Concerted evolution of multigene families. In Nei, M. and Koehn, R.K. (eds) Evolution of Genes and Proteins. Sinauer, Sunderland, Massachusetts, pp. 38-61. 

Ca2+/calmodulin. The effect of calmodulin binding is to increase the affinity of the substrate Ca2+ site by 20- to 30-fold. This highly cooperative activation mechanism makes the PMCAs very sensitive to small changes in [Ca2+]j. A group of at least five PMCAs forms a multigene family. Three isoforms, PMCA1-3, occur in brain and each has a distinct distribution [20]. 

Buck, L. and Axel, R, A novel multigene family may encode odorant receptors a molecular basis for odor recognition. Cell 65 175-187,1991. 

McFadyen, D. A. and Locke, J. (2000) High-resolution FISH mapping of the rat alpha2u-globulin multigene family. Mamm. Genome 11, 292-9. 

Saito, K., Nishikawa, J., Imagawa, M., Nishihara, T. and Matsuo, M. (2000) Molecular evidence of complex tissue- and sex-specific mRNA expression of the rat alpha(2u)-globulin multigene family. Biochem. Biophys. Res. Commun. 272, 337 44. 

Cauxin is markedly different from previously reported mammalian CESs in term of urinary excretion. Other mammalian CESs comprise multigene families, and CES isozymes are highly and ubiquitously expressed in tissues such as the brain, liver, kidney, lung, and small intestine (Satoh and Hosokawa 1998). Our work on cauxin was the first description of a carboxylesterase excreted in urine. 

Ishii, T., Hirota, J. and Mombaerts, P. (2003) Combinational coexpression of neural and immune multigene families in mouse vomeronasal sensory systems. Curr. Biol. 13, 394-400. 

Most sequences belong to multigene families. These are proteins that have evolved by gene duplication, usually followed by specialization of function. There will be a group of homologous proteins, all of which... 

Picoult-Newberg et al. (1999) analyzed >21,000 5 ESTs and >19,000 3 ESTs. More than 6000 candidates were localized, but only 850 passed the filters applied. They inspected the fluorescence traces of 100 randomly selected specimens. A total of 88 verified candidates were then validated as common variants by sequencing from a panel of individuals 55 out of 88 sites were confirmed to be polymorphic. In four cases all samples appeared to be heterozygous, which points to sampling from more than one gene of a multigene family (they did not pursue possible paralogy). 

Morita K, Furuse M, Fujimoto K, and Tsukita S [1999] Claudin multigene family encoding four-transmembrane domain protein components of tight junction strands. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 96 511-516... 

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