Disease relevance of NEURL

• The human neuralized homolog (NEURL) has been recently determined and found to map to chromosome 10q25.1 within the region frequently deleted in malignant astrocytomas [1].
• Furthermore, DNA sequencing analysis of the h-neu transcript revealed one of the glioma cell lines, U251MG, had a single nucleotide substitution which resulted in an amino acid change from glycine (GGC) to serine (AGC) at codon 253 [2].

High impact information on NEURL

• Northern blot and RT-PCR analyses revealed that h-neu mRNA was expressed at very low levels in human malignant astrocytoma tissues and the majority of glioma cell lines examined, while normal brains expressed h-neu transcript [2].
• These observations led us to hypothesize that h-neu gene plays a role in determination of cell fate in the human central nervous system and may act as a tumor suppressor whose inactivation could be associated with malignant progression of astrocytic tumors [2].
• Thus, LOH around PTEN was closely associated with a reduced overall survival (p = 0.0020) but LOH at NEURL or DMBTI was not (p > 0.05) [3].
• Neurl encodes a polypeptide associated with the plasma membrane but also detected in the cytoplasm [1].

Anatomical context of NEURL

• Using DNA from aliquots of tumor blocks and leukocytes, we investigated LOH around the PTEN, NEURL, and DMBTI genes (10q23.3-26.1) with the silver staining procedure [3].

References