Mesoderm-specific transcript homolog protein is a

protein Proteins are large biomolecules and macromolecules that comprise one or more long chains of amino acid residue (biochemistry), residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including Enzyme catalysis, catalysing metab ...

that in humans is encoded by the ''MEST''

gene In biology, the word gene has two meanings. The Mendelian gene is a basic unit of heredity. The molecular gene is a sequence of nucleotides in DNA that is transcribed to produce a functional RNA. There are two types of molecular genes: protei ...

. This gene encodes a member of the

Alpha/beta hydrolase superfamily The alpha/beta hydrolase superfamily is a superfamily of hydrolytic enzymes of widely differing phylogenetic origin and catalytic function that share a common fold. The core of each enzyme is an alpha/beta-sheet (rather than a barrel), containi ...

and has

isoform A protein isoform, or "protein variant", is a member of a set of highly similar proteins that originate from a single gene and are the result of genetic differences. While many perform the same or similar biological roles, some isoforms have uniqu ...

-specific imprinting. The loss of imprinting of this gene has been linked to certain types of cancer and may be due to promoter switching. The encoded protein may play a role in development. Three

transcript variants Alternative splicing, alternative RNA splicing, or differential splicing, is an alternative splicing process during gene expression that allows a single gene to produce different splice variants. For example, some exons of a gene may be included ...

encoding two distinct isoforms have been identified for this gene. A

pseudogene Pseudogenes are nonfunctional segments of DNA that resemble functional genes. Pseudogenes can be formed from both protein-coding genes and non-coding genes. In the case of protein-coding genes, most pseudogenes arise as superfluous copies of fun ...

for this locus is located on

chromosome 6 Chromosome 6 is one of the 23 pairs of chromosomes in humans. People normally have two copies of this chromosome. Chromosome 6 spans nearly 171 million base pairs (the building material of DNA) and represents between 5.5 and 6% of the total DNA i ...

References

Further reading