Engineering

Alex Cardenas January 26, 2016

The Mars Gene

The very unique and intriguing gene strand known as the Mars Gene is not like a simple gene strand you would learn about in a basic biology course. This gene encodes a member of the class I family of aminoacyl-tRNA . These enzymes play a pivotal role in protein biosynthesis by charging tRNAs with their linked amino acids. The encoded protein is a component of the multi-tRNA synthetase complex and catalyzes the ligation of methionine to tRNA molecules. The structure of the Mars Gene is comprised of a molecular mass of 101116 Da and has a size of 900 amino acids. The quaternary structure is Component of the multisynthetase complex which is comprised of a bifunctional glutamyl-prolyl-tRNA synthetase, the monospecific isoleucyl, leucyl, glutaminyl, methionyl, lysyl, arginyl, and aspartyl-tRNA synthetases as well as three auxiliary proteins, p18, p48 and p43. The Mars Gene itself has a rather large presence in overexpression in bone and lymph nodes. However this gene is linked to many different diseases and mutation such as infantile liver failure syndrome 2, acute infantile liver failure-multisystemic involvement syndrome, autosomal recessive spastic paraplegia type 70, autosomal dominant charcot-marie-tooth disease type 2 due to mars mutation, and voyeurism.

Sources:

(n.d.). Retrieved January 26, 2016, from http://www.genecards.org/cgi-bin/carddisp.pl?gene=MARS

Genes and mapped phenotypes. (n.d.). Retrieved January 26, 2016, from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/gene/4141

(n.d.). Retrieved January 25, 2016, from www.omim.org/entry/156560