Nescient Helix Loop Helix Protein 1 (NHLH1)

The helix-loop-helix (HLH) proteins are a family of putative transcription factors, some of which have been shown to play an important role in growth and development of a wide variety of tissues and species.

SCL, also called TAL1, had been identified because of its involvement in a 1;14 translocation in a stem cell leukemia; it is disrupted in about one-fourth of cases of T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The novel gene was referred to as NSCL because of its expression in the developing nervous system. Murine Nscl cDNA clones had a coding region of 399 basepairs, predicting a protein of 14.8 kD. The nucleotide sequence showed 71% identity and the amino acid sequence 61% identity to murine Scl in the HLH domain.