Aldehyde Dehydrogenase 9 Family, Member A1 (ALDH9A1)

ALDH9A1 has a high activity for oxidation of gamma-aminobutyraldehyde and other amino aldehydes. The enzyme catalyzes the dehydrogenation of gamma-aminobutyraldehyde to gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA). This isozyme is a tetramer of identical 54-kD subunits.By sequence analysis of the ALDH9 locus in several unrelated individuals, Lin et al. (1996) determined that 2 of the differences were due to polymorphism. They attributed the third difference to a misprint in Kurys et al. (1993). Lin et al. (1996) reported that the ALDH9 gene contains 10 exons and spans approximately 45 kb. Northern blot analysis revealed that ALDH9 is expressed as a 2.4-kb mRNA in a variety of tissues, with the highest levels of expression in liver, skeletal muscle, and kidney.