Ssu72 Introduction

The Ssu72 RNA polymerase II CTD phosphatase homolog is a protein from Drosophila melanogaster that shares a high level of sequence similarity with the human Ssu72 protein - the function of which has been characterised to some degree in the literature and a number of putative homologs identified across a broad range of species. While there are fewer than 10 papers in PubMed that reference the human protein, it is useful to examine some of that information to provide a context for a discussion of the speculative function of the drosophila protein; particularly given that the human Ssu72 shares 60.21% sequence identity with it and that there are no gaps in the alignment produced after running a BLAST (See figure 1). This suggests that, on the face of it, there may be at least a broad similarity in function that can be inferred from the human protein by virtue of Ssu72's conservation across evolution.