Tuftelin
Protein-coding gene in the species Homo sapiens
Tuftelin is an acidic phosphorylated glycoprotein found in tooth enamel. In humans, the tuftelin protein is encoded by the TUFT1 gene. It is an acidic protein that is thought to play a role in dental enamel mineralization and is implicated in caries susceptibility. It is also thought to be involved with adaptation to hypoxia, mesenchymal stem cell function, and neurotrophin nerve growth factor mediated neuronal differentiation.
01Classification
There are two kinds of enamel proteins: amelogenins and nonamelogenins. Tuftelin falls under nonamelogenins.
02Function
This protein is formed for a short time during amelogenesis. The function of tuftelins is under contention, but it is proposed that it acts to start the mineralization process of enamel during tooth development.
Other significant proteins in enamel are amelogenins, enamelins, and ameloblastins.
03Research
The human encoding gene for tuftelin (TUFT1) was cloned by Profs. Danny Deutsch and Aharon Palmon from the Hebrew University-Hadassah School of Dental Medicine in Jerusalem.
04Interactions
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Tuftelin”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Ideogram human chromosome 1.svg by National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Public domain
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