Dear friends,
I’ve been browsing the microarray database (at Microarray Data :: Allen Brain Atlas: Human Brain), however the gene that I am looking for (SMN1) is not there, I tried all synonims, but can only find the SMN2 or another paralog, but not the SMN1.
Anybody has some insight on how to find it? Not sure if it is not available or I am just searching wrong.
Thanks in advance!
Maybe others have a better answer, but I think this can be explained by one (or more) of the following. First, these genes are nearly identical in sequence–here is a quote from GeneCards: “The telomeric (SMN1) and centromeric (SMN2) copies of this gene are nearly identical and encode the same protein. […] The critical sequence difference between the two genes is a single nucleotide in exon 7, which is thought to be an exon splice enhancer.” Second, microarray probes target specific locations within a genome and unless this one nucleotide happened to be targeted, there would be no way to distinguish expression of these two genes from one another. Finally, the human brain atlas is several years old now and therefore uses an older version of the transcriptome. It is possible that at the time these were not known to be two separate genes. There is more information about the array in the Documentation.