DCT

Protein identityUniProt · HPA

UniProt accession

P40126

Gene

DCT

Ensembl

ENSG00000080166

Chromosome

13

Canonical length

519 aa

Protein class

Disease related genes, Enzymes, Human disease related genes, Metabolic proteins, Potential drug targets, Predicted membrane proteins, Transporters

Subcellular location

Vesicles,Plasma membrane

OverviewNCBI Gene

Predicted to enable dopachrome isomerase activity. Involved in response to blue light. Located in intracellular membrane-bounded organelle and plasma membrane. Implicated in oculocutaneous albinism. [provided by Alliance of Genome Resources, Apr 2025]

Canonical amino-acid sequenceUniProt

519 residues, UniProt reviewed canonical sequence.

>P40126|DCT
     1  MSPLWWGFLL SCLGCKILPG AQGQFPRVCM TVDSLVNKEC CPRLGAESAN VCGSQQGRGQ
    61  CTEVRADTRP WSGPYILRNQ DDRELWPRKF FHRTCKCTGN FAGYNCGDCK FGWTGPNCER
   121  KKPPVIRQNI HSLSPQEREQ FLGALDLAKK RVHPDYVITT QHWLGLLGPN GTQPQFANCS
   181  VYDFFVWLHY YSVRDTLLGP GRPYRAIDFS HQGPAFVTWH RYHLLCLERD LQRLIGNESF
   241  ALPYWNFATG RNECDVCTDQ LFGAARPDDP TLISRNSRFS SWETVCDSLD DYNHLVTLCN
   301  GTYEGLLRRN QMGRNSMKLP TLKDIRDCLS LQKFDNPPFF QNSTFSFRNA LEGFDKADGT
   361  LDSQVMSLHN LVHSFLNGTN ALPHSAANDP IFVVLHSFTD AIFDEWMKRF NPPADAWPQE
   421  LAPIGHNRMY NMVPFFPPVT NEELFLTSDQ LGYSYAIDLP VSVEETPGWP TTLLVVMGTL
   481  VALVGLFVLL AFLQYRRLRK GYTPLMETHL SSKRYTEEA

LocalizationUniProt · AlphaFold · HPA

Whether an antibody against DCT can act on the native protein depends on physical access: surface and secreted proteins are reachable by circulating antibodies, intracellular proteins usually are not.

Antibody reachability

Cell surface

Secreted

No

Transmembrane segments

1

Mean surface accessibility (rSASA)

0.27

Highest tissue expression

102 nTPM

Expression across tissuesHPA

DiseaseUniProt · ClinVar · IEDB · PubMed

Four sources answering four different questions about DCT.

Disease | AllUniProt

Conditions DCT is implicated in, by any mechanism.

• Albinism, oculocutaneous, 8 (OCA8) MIM:619165

Disease | GeneticClinVar

11 pathogenic / likely-pathogenic of 98 ClinVar records.

Conditions with pathogenic or likely-pathogenic variants.

• Oculocutaneous albinism type 8
• Albinism

Disease | ImmuneIEDB

Conditions an epitope on DCT was assayed in.

• melanoma T cell
• skin melanoma T cell
• glioblastoma T cell

ReferencesPubMed · IEDB

Publications for DCT from three distinct lines of evidence, kept separate because they answer different questions: whether antibodies are directed at the protein, whether a B-cell epitope has been mapped on it, and whether a T-cell epitope has. Each is labelled with its source.

Sources: PubMed — antigen-level antibody evidence from a custom retrieval. Records matching a controlled set of autoantibody terms (the MeSH descriptors Autoantibodies and Autoantigens, with title and abstract term variants) were obtained through NCBI E-utilities, and their titles and abstracts parsed for constructions that direct an antibody at a named protein rather than for co-occurrence. Captured names were resolved against UniProt nomenclature and each antigen adjudicated individually against the source text. IEDB — curated epitope assays from the Immune Epitope Database (Vita et al., Nucleic Acids Research 2019). Bibliographic records from PubMed and MeSH, U.S. National Library of Medicine; citation metrics from NIH iCite (Hutchins et al., PLoS Biology 2016). Titles link to PubMed; abstracts are not reproduced here. The NLM does not endorse this analysis.

Genetic constraint and essentialitygnomAD · DepMap

Does the body need this protein intact? Low LOEUF or a strong DepMap dependency means loss or blockade of the protein is likely to be felt.

gnomAD LOEUF (loss-of-function intolerance)

1.17

gnomAD pLI

0

gnomAD missense Z

-0.35

DepMap mean gene effect

0.01

DepMap dependency class

none

Cancer expressionTCGA

Across TCGA tumor cohorts, this protein is over-expressed in roughly 3% of surveyed tumor types (aggregate summary; per-cohort expression, alteration, and survival load in the interactive view).

OntologyGO

Biological processes

• cell development
• developmental pigmentation
• epidermis development
• melanin biosynthetic process from tyrosine
• positive regulation of neuroblast proliferation
• response to blue light
• ventricular zone neuroblast division

Molecular functions

• copper ion binding
• dopachrome isomerase activity
• oxidoreductase activity

Cellular components

• cytosol
• melanosome
• melanosome membrane
• membrane
• plasma membrane

Protein domainsUniProt · Pfam · InterPro

• Tyrosinase copper-binding domain
• Di-copper centre-containing domain superfamily
• Tyrosinase and Hemocyanin
• Common central domain of tyrosinase

KeywordsUniProt

• Albinism
• Glycoprotein
• Isomerase
• Melanin biosynthesis
• Membrane
• Metal-binding
• Signal
• Transmembrane
• Transmembrane helix
• Zinc