View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Elsevier - Publisher Connector Developmental Cell Review E Proteins and ID Proteins: Helix-Loop-Helix Partners in Development and Disease Lan-Hsin Wang1 and Nicholas E. Baker1,2,3,* 1Department of Genetics, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, USA 2Department of Developmental and Molecular Biology, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, USA 3Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, USA *Correspondence:
[email protected] http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.devcel.2015.10.019 The basic Helix-Loop-Helix (bHLH) proteins represent a well-known class of transcriptional regulators. Many bHLH proteins act as heterodimers with members of a class of ubiquitous partners, the E proteins. A widely expressed class of inhibitory heterodimer partners—the Inhibitor of DNA-binding (ID) proteins—also exists. Genetic and molecular analyses in humans and in knockout mice implicate E proteins and ID proteins in a wide variety of diseases, belying the notion that they are non-specific partner proteins. Here, we explore relationships of E proteins and ID proteins to a variety of disease processes and highlight gaps in knowledge of disease mechanisms. E proteins and Inhibitor of DNA-binding (ID) proteins are widely conferring DNA-binding specificity and transcriptional activation expressed transcriptional regulators with very general functions. on heterodimers with the ubiquitous E proteins (Figure 1). They are implicated in diseases by evidence ranging from Another class of pervasive HLH proteins acts in opposition to confirmed Mendelian inheritance, association studies, and E proteins.