Huntingtin Protein Ortholog Explorer

Huntington’s disease is caused by an inherited mutation in the huntingtin (HTT) gene, which encodes the huntingtin protein. This mutation expands a region of the protein known as the polyglutamine (polyQ) tract, causing the protein to misfold and form toxic aggregates that progressively damage neurons in the brain. Huntingtin itself is a highly conserved protein found across the animal kingdom, where it plays important roles in nervous system development, intracellular transport, gene regulation, and cell survival. Although the polyQ region is remarkably conserved through evolution, its length - and that of the adjacent polyproline (polyP) tract - varies among species. This dashboard identifies and compares these regions in every publicly available huntingtin ortholog (the corresponding huntingtin protein in another species) from UniProt and NCBI, producing a dataset of over 1,000 unique species. The interactive visualizations allow for the exploration of polyQ and polyP tract length and the protein’s overall domain structure across the animal kingdom.