What’s in a naming convention?
Confusingly, a gene on Chromosome 5 was given the name UDG2, but possesses no homology to the UDG family of enzymes, and no enzymatic activity. Instead, it appears to be a cyclin-like protein.
I’m in favor of changing the name of the gene on Chromosome 5 to something more cyclin-like.
There are five DNA bases, not four. ATCG and U. I bet you didn’t know that uracil can be incorporated into DNA!
I didn’t, until I started working on UNG, the enzyme that removes uracil from DNA.
Uracil in DNA is thought to come from two sources:
1) modification of cytidine (C) by deamination
2) misincorporation by polymerases that can’t distinguish between uracil and thymidine (T).
UDG refers to the uracil DNA N-glycosylase family of enzymes, which are highly conserved from bacteria and viruses all the way up through primates.
Although lower organisms have only one UDG, usually called UNG (for Uracil DNA N-glycosylase), higher eukaryotes have two splice variants: ung1 in mitochondria and ung2 in nuclei. In humans, the UNG gene that encodes the two splice variants is located on Chromosome 12.
The UNG catalytic domain is one of the most conserved, and fastest, enzymes on record. It has been studied extensively in vitro, using traditional biochemical methods and x-ray crystallography.
