Tumor Suppressing Subtransferable Candidate 4 (TSSC4)

TSSC4 is one of several tumor-suppressing subtransferable fragments located in the imprinted gene domain of 11p15.5, an important tumor-suppressor gene region. Alterations in this region have been associated with the Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, Wilms tumor, rhabdomyosarcoma, adrenocortical carcinoma, and lung, ovarian, and breast cancer. This gene is located among several imprinted genes; however, this gene, as well as the pan-hematopoietic expression gene, escapes imprinting. This gene may play a role in malignancies and disease that involve this region. The TSSC4 cDNA encodes a predicted protein of 349 amino acids that shows no close similarity to previously reported proteins. Northern blot analysis revealed that the TSSC4 gene was expressed as an approximately 1.6-kb transcript in fetal brain, lung, liver, and kidney.