Protein degradation is an essential mechanism for the maintenance of cellular homeostasis, in which excess or aberrant proteins are eliminated from the cell. In eukaryotes, conjugation of target proteins to ubiquitin is an essential step in the proteasome-dependent degradation process and is mediated by a family of ubiquitin conjugating enzymes (UBC). Several of these have been identified in a variety of organisms. Here we report the identification of UBE2G2, a human homologue of the yeast Ubc7 gene. We describe a 2.9-kb cDNA sequence encoding a 165-amino-acid protein that shares significant similarity with other members of the UBC family. We have found UBE2G2 to be ubiquitously expressed, with high levels of expression seen in adult muscle, and have detected two transcripts of 2.9 and 7.0 kb in all tissues. In addition, we have mapped UBC7 to human chromosome 21q22.3 close to 21qtel.
Copyright 1998 Academic Press.