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Editorial
. 2022 Feb;29(2):266-268.
doi: 10.1038/s41418-021-00927-4. Epub 2022 Jan 10.

Extreme conservation of the poly-glutamine tract in huntingtin is related to neurodevelopmental functions: the "better" may become the "enemy of the good" in the course of evolution

Affiliations
Editorial

Extreme conservation of the poly-glutamine tract in huntingtin is related to neurodevelopmental functions: the "better" may become the "enemy of the good" in the course of evolution

Emmanuel Brouillet. Cell Death Differ. 2022 Feb.
No abstract available

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Conflict of interest statement

The author declares no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1. Huntingtin interactome and the high conservation of its polyQ tract contribute to show a key role of the protein in neurodevelopment.
A Representation of the network of proteins interacting with huntingtin using String (https://string-db.org). Each of the 409 proteins shown is represented by a gray ball if unrelated to development or colored when its biological function is related to development (according to Gene Ontology). Interactions between proteins are represented by gray lines. The bottom panel is a zoom of the network showing the enrichment of developmental (colored) proteins. The black arrow indicates HTT. The list of the 409 proteins is from a list of 412 proteins available in Shirazaki et al. [9]. B The graph shows the number of CAG repeats in different mammals across taxa (X-axis) and the corresponding logarithm of the volume of the brain of these animals (Y-axis). For clarity, only common names of well-known species are indicated. It is remarkable that, in the course of evolution in mammals, the number of CAG repeats remained higher than 6, for example, the number found in horses (Equus caballus). Also note that this number is relatively constant and always below 13, with the exception of the human huntingtin gene that has an average of 20 repeats. The number of CAG for each animal shown has been extracted using NCBI resources. Approximates of the size of the brain (volume) for each animal were from recent publications [–15].

Comment on

References

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