Myosin-6 is a protein

Protein

Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...

 that in humans is encoded by the MYH6 gene

Gene

A gene is a molecular unit of heredity of a living organism. It is a name given to some stretches of DNA and RNA that code for a type of protein or for an RNA chain that has a function in the organism. Living beings depend on genes, as they specify all proteins and functional RNA chains...

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Function

Cardiac muscle myosin

Myosin

Myosins comprise a family of ATP-dependent motor proteins and are best known for their role in muscle contraction and their involvement in a wide range of other eukaryotic motility processes. They are responsible for actin-based motility. The term was originally used to describe a group of similar...

 is a hexamer consisting of two heavy chain subunits, two light chain subunits, and two regulatory subunits. This gene encodes the alpha heavy chain subunit of cardiac myosin. The gene is located ~4kb downstream of the gene encoding the beta heavy chain subunit of cardiac myosin.

Clinical significance

Mutations in this gene cause familial hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy

Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy is a disease of the myocardium in which a portion of the myocardium is hypertrophied without any obvious cause...

 and atrial septal defect

Atrial septal defect

Atrial septal defect is a form of congenital heart defect that enables blood flow between the left and right atria via the interatrial septum. The interatrial septum is the tissue that divides the right and left atria...

3.

External links

• GeneReviews/NIH/NCBI/UW entry on Familial Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Overview