THE DUTT1 GENE, A NOVEL NCAM FAMILY MEMBER IS EXPRESSED IN DEVELOPINGMURINE NEURAL TISSUES AND HAS AN UNUSUALLY BROAD PATTERN OF EXPRESSION

A new member of the NCAM family mapping to 3p12 has been isolated and predicted to be arranged in five immunoglobulin-like domains and three fibronectin-like domains which are particularly homologous to L1. The re is a transmembrane domain and a long cytoplasmic region with no det ectable homology to other sequences. Although less closely related to DCC, another family member, both share a loop of positively charged am ino acids within the first immunoglobulin domain, unique to these two members of this very large gene family. Preliminary studies of express ion in mouse embryos support an inferred role in neural development, b ut the observation of widespread gene expression in adult human tissue s indicates that this protein has additional functions to those perfor med in neural cells.