Ninjurin 1 (NINJ1)

The ninjurin protein is upregulated after nerve injury both in dorsal root ganglion neurons and in Schwann cells. It demonstrates properties of a homophilic adhesion molecule and promotes neurite outgrowth from primary cultured dorsal root ganglion neurons.

ninjurin is widely expressed in both adult and embryonic tissues, primarily those of epithelial origin. They used aggregation assays to demonstrate that ninjurin-mediated adhesion requires divalent cations and is an energy-dependent process. The critical domain for ninjurin-mediated homophilic adhesion was localized to an 11-residue region between pro26 and asn37 by mutagenesis and by employing synthetic oligopeptides as competitive inhibitors of ninjurin-mediated adhesion.