Polyhomeotic Like Protein 2 (PHC2)

In Drosophila melanogaster, the 'Polycomb' group (PcG) of genes are part of a cellular memory system that is responsible for the stable inheritance of gene activity. PcG proteins form a large multimeric, chromatin-associated protein complex.

PHC2 has homology to the Drosophila PcG protein 'polyhomeotic' (Ph) and is known to heterodimerize with EDR1 and colocalize with BMI1 in interphase nuclei of human cells. The specific function in human cells has not yet been determined. Two transcript variants encoding different isoforms have been found for this gene.The authors concluded that HPH1, HPH2, and BMI1 are part of a common, multimeric protein complex. Northern blot analysis revealed that HPH2 was expressed ubiquitously as a 2.5-kb transcript.