Synonyms
Historical Background: Relaxin Family Peptides and Their Receptors
Relaxin was one of the first reproductive hormones to be identified, following the observation that a factor in the serum of pregnant guinea pigs induced relaxation of the birth canal (Hisaw 1926). Until recently, relaxin was considered purely a hormone of pregnancy and little was known of its potential roles in males and nonpregnant females; the purification of relaxin from animal sources led to the determination of its peptide structure, biological actions, and development of reliable bioassays (Schwabe and McDonald 1977; James et al. 1977; John et al. 1981), and this knowledge precipitated the use of recombinant DNA techniques to clone the rat (Hudson et al. 1981) and pig (Haley et al. 1982) relaxin genes, followed soon after by human gene-1 (RLN1) (Hudson et al. 1983) and gene-2 relaxin (RLN2) (Hudson et al. 1984). The identification of additional relaxin peptides (including...
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References
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Summers, R.J., Halls, M.L., van der Westhuizen, E.T. (2012). Relaxin Family Peptide Receptors (RXFP) 1 and 2. In: Choi, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Signaling Molecules. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0461-4_362
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