Description
Minichromosome maintenance, S. cerevisiae, homolog of, 2, also known as MITOTIN, CDCL1 or BM28, is a human nuclear protein that plays an important role in two crucial steps of the cell cycle, namely, onset of DNA replication and cell division. It is similar to members of the family of early S-phase proteins. The MCM2 gene is mapped to 3q21.3. The hexameric protein complex formed by MCM proteins is a key component of the pre-replication complex(pre-RC) and may be involved in the formation of replication forks and in the recruitment of other DNA replication related proteins. In the G0 stage, the MCM2 and MCM5 proteins were much less abundant than the MCM7 and MCM3 proteins, which suggests that the MCM proteins are not present in stoichiometric amounts and that only a proportion of these molecules actively participate in cell cycle regulation as part of MCM complexes