Melanoma Antigen Family A6 (MAGEA6)

MAGEA6 is a member of the MAGEA gene family. The members of this family encode proteins with 50 to 80% sequence identity to each other. The promoters and first exons of the MAGEA genes show considerable variability, suggesting that the existence of this gene family enables the same function to be expressed under different transcriptional controls. The MAGEA genes are clustered at chromosomal location Xq28. They have been implicated in some hereditary disorders, such as dyskeratosis congenita. Two transcript variants encoding the same protein have been identified for this gene.MAGE6 cDNA was cloned from a melanoma cell cDNA library. The gene encodes a 314-amino acid polypeptide that is 99% identical to MAGE3. RT-PCR revealed that MAGE6 is expressed in a variety of cancer cell lines, but among normal tissues only in testis.