Neuropeptide Y Receptor Y5 (NPY5R)

Gerald et al. (1996) cloned a novel Y-type receptor that they termed Y5 from rat hypothalamus and reported that it encodes a 456-amino acid protein with less than 35% overall identity to known Y-type receptors. They identified a human Y5 homolog in the GenBank database having 87% overall identity with rat Y5.

The rat and human Y5 protein sequences share 88% identity and show 30 to 33% identity to other NPY receptor subtypes. Northern blot analysis revealed that NPY5R is expressed as a 2.6-kb mRNA in the brain but in no other tissues tested. Hu et al. (1996) also isolated another rat cDNA containing a 123-amino acid insertion near the 5-prime end, which may represent an alternatively spliced form of the gene.