Description
Background: Machado-Joseph disease, also known as spinocerebellar ataxia-3, is an autosomal dominant neurologic disorder. The protein encoded by this gene contains (CAG)n repeats in the coding region, and the expansion of these repeats from the normal 13-36 to 68-79 is one cause of Machado-Joseph disease. There is a negative correlation between the age of onset and CAG repeat numbers. Alternatively spliced transcript variants encoding different isoforms have been described for this gene. [provided by RefSeq, Sep 2009]