Transmembrane Protein 183B (TMEM183B)

TMEM183B is associated with cell membranes. By PCR using human cDNA panels, the authors determined that the protein was most highly expressed in brain, but also in lung, pancreas, thymus, intestine, and lymphocytes.TMEM183B is a young gene specific to humans, derived from the evolutionarily conserved TMEM183A gene through retroposition after the divergence of human and chimpanzee. Furthermore, it has evolved rapidly, driven by positive Darwinian selection as evident from a high ratio of nonsynonymous to synonymous substitutions between the new TMEM183B and the parental TMEM183A genes.The TMEM183B gene contains the 1,128-bp reading frame of the parent gene and encodes a 376-amino acid protein. There are only 6 nucleotide changes in the coding region between TMEM183B and TMEM183A.