title: TAFA: a novel secreted family with conserved cysteine residues and restricted expression in the brain.
abstract: We have discovered a family of small secreted proteins in Homo sapiens and Mus musculus using a novel database searching strategy. The family is composed of five highly homologous genes referred to as TAFA-1 to -5. The TAFA genes encode proteins of approximately 100 amino acids that contain conserved cysteine residues at fixed positions. TAFA-1 to -4 are more closely related to each other than to TAFA-5, in which a conserved motif including CC in TAFA-1 to -4 is not present. In H. sapiens, TAFA-3 has two isoforms formed by alternative splicing. Sequence homology analyses reveal that TAFA proteins appear distantly related to MIP-1alpha, a member of the CC-chemokine family. TAFA mRNAs are highly expressed in specific brain regions, with little expression seen in other tissues.
authors.affiliation: Biology Research, Nuvelo, Sunnyvale, CA 94085, USA. ttang@nuvelo.com
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tom Tang
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Emtage
authors.forename: Walter D
authors.initials: WD
authors.lastname: Funk
authors.forename: Tianhua
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: Matthew
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Arterburn
authors.forename: Emily E J
authors.initials: EE
authors.lastname: Park
authors.forename: Fabio
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Rupp
mesh_terms: D017398:Alternative Splicing; D000595:Amino Acid Sequence; D000818:Animals; D001921:Brain / Q000378:metabolism*; D054405:Chemokine CCL3; D054407:Chemokine CCL4; D018925:Chemokines / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D003001:Cloning, Molecular; D017124:Conserved Sequence; D003545:Cysteine / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000378:metabolism; D017931:DNA Primers / Q000737:chemistry; D020224:Expressed Sequence Tags; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D006801:Humans; D019402:Macrophage Inflammatory Proteins / Q000378:metabolism; D051379:Mice; D008957:Models, Genetic; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D005810:Multigene Family; D010802:Phylogeny; D020033:Protein Isoforms; D021382:Protein Sorting Signals; D017386:Sequence Homology, Amino Acid; D015398:Signal Transduction
chemical_list: D054405:Chemokine CCL3; D054407:Chemokine CCL4; D018925:Chemokines; D017931:DNA Primers; D019402:Macrophage Inflammatory Proteins; D020033:Protein Isoforms; D021382:Protein Sorting Signals; D003545:Cysteine