Identification and characterization of human DIAPH3 gene in silico

Formin homology proteins with FH1 and FH2 domains are signaling effectors for assembly and polarization of actin filaments. FH1 is the binding domain for Profilin, SRC, EMS1/Cortactin, FNBP1, FNBP2, FNBP3, FNBP4 and WBP4/Fbp2l, while FH2 is the actin-filament modification domain. Here, we identified and characterized a novel member of Formin-homology gene family, Diaphanous homology 3 (DIAPH3), by using bioinformatics. DIAPH3 isoform 1, corresponding to 3'-truncated FLJ34705 cDNA and 5'-divergent IMAGE5265490 cDNA, encodes full-length DIAPH3 protein (1112 aa), while DIAPH3 isoform 2, identical to NM_030932.2 cDNA, encodes N-terminally truncated DIAPH3 protein (849 aa). DIAPH3 isoform 1, consisting of exons 1-27, was expressed in lymph node, erythroid progenitor cells as well as in pancreatic cancer. DIAPH3 isoform 2, consisting of exons 1b and 8-27, was expressed in testis. DIAPH3 gene at human chromosome 13q21.2 was found to encode two isoforms due to alternative splicing of the alternative promoter type. Full-length human DIAPH3 protein, consisting of FDD, FH1 and FH2 domains, showed 51.3% total-amino-acid identity with DIAPH1, and 57.3% total-amino-acid identity with DIAPH2. FMNL1/FMNL, FMNL2/FHOD2, FMNL3/WBP3, DAAM1, DAAM2, DIAPH1, DIAPH2 and DIAPH3 were classified as the FDD-type Formin homology proteins, while GRID2IP/Delphilin, FHOD1, Fmn1 and Fmn2 were classified as the non-FDD-type Formin homology proteins. This is the first report on identification and characterization of human DIAPH3 gene.