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Neurogenins

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Synonyms

Neurogenin1 [Neurog1; Ngn1; Math4C; bHLHa6; Neurod3]; Neurogenin2 [Neurog2; Ngn2; Math4A; bHLHa8; Atoh4]; Neurogenin3 [Neurog3; Ngn3; Math4B; bHLHa7; Atoh5]

Historical Background

Neurogenins (Neurog or Ngn) belong to a family of proneural proteins that play essential roles in cell fate determination during neurogenesis (Fig. 1a). They belong to a large class of basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors, which contains a conserved helix-loop-helix dimerization domain and a basic region providing DNA-binding activity (Fig. 1b) (Guillemot 1999). Proneural bHLH genes are both necessary and sufficient to initiate neuronal differentiation in a cell-autonomous manner and they are expressed at the correct time and place to select neural precursors for neuronal commitment.

Neurogenins, Fig. 1
figure 1536 figure 1536

Structure, function, and conservation. (a) Phylogenetic tree of proneural basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factors, based on protein sequence similarities in the bHLH domain....

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Correspondence to Roberta Azzarelli .

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Azzarelli, R. (2018). Neurogenins. In: Choi, S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Signaling Molecules. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-67199-4_101798

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