Neurogenic Differentiation 6 (NEUROD6)

NEUROD6 is a member of the NEUROD (NEUROD1) family of basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors. As part of a large-scale sequence analysis of a human fetal brain cDNA library, Guo et al. (2002) cloned NEUROD6, which they called MATH2. The deduced 337-amino acid protein contains an N-terminal region rich in glutamic acid followed by a basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) domain. The NEUROD6 protein shares 98% overall identity with the mouse Math2 ortholog, with 100% identity over the Math2 bHLH domain. NEUROD6 shares 95% identity over the bHLH region with NEUROD1 and NEUROD2. Northern blot analysis of 8 human tissues detected 2.4- and 1.7-kb transcripts exclusively in brain; the 2.4-kb transcript corresponds to the full-length cDNA.