Intermediate Filament Family Orphan 1 (IFFO1)

IFFO1 is a member of the intermediate filament family. Intermediate filaments are proteins which are primordial components of the cytoskeleton and nuclear envelope. The proteins encoded by the members of this gene family are evolutionarily and structurally related but have limited sequence homology, with the exception of the central rod domain. Multiple alternatively spliced transcript variants encoding different isoforms have been found for this gene.

By subtractive hybridization to enrich for transcripts highly expressed in testis, followed by serologic expression screening with antibodies from a seminoma patient, Tureci et al. (2002) isolated HOM-TES-103. RT-PCR detected ubiquitous expression.The International Radiation Hybrid Mapping Consortium mapped the HOM-TES-103 gene to chromosome 12 .