Description
TAFA-2 also named FAM19A2 belongs to the TAFA family of chemokinelike proteins. Like other members of the FAM19/TAFA family, with the exception of TAFA5, mature TAFA1 to 4 contain 10 regularly spaced cysteine residues. Human TAFA2 is 97% aa identical to mouse TAFA2. TAFA2 expression can be detected in the central nervous system (CNS), colon, heart, lung, spleen, kidney, and thymus, but its expression in the CNS is 50 to 1000fold higher than in other tissues. Within the CNS, TAFA2 expression is highest in the occipital and frontal cortex (3 to 10fold more abundantly expressed than in other cortical regions) and medulla. The biological functions of TAFA family members remain to be determined, but there are a few tentative hypotheses.