A reference map of the human binary protein interactome.
Aard is specifically up-regulated in Sertoli cells during mouse testis differentiation.
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Mouse Aard expression is restricted to Sertoli cells of the developing testis cords, with elevated mRNA coinciding with early testis differentiation, and is testis-specific in both embryonic and adult animals.
"The period of elevated mRNA expression coincides with early differentiation of the testis and is limited to Sertoli cells of the developing testis cords."
Alanine and arginine rich domain containing protein, Aard, is directly regulated by androgen receptor in mouse Sertoli cells.
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Mouse Aard is a direct transcriptional target of the androgen receptor in Sertoli cells; AARD protein is significantly downregulated in Sertoli-cell-selective AR knockout testes.
"The present study identified Aard as a gene that is directly regulated by AR in mouse SCs, which is important in spermatogenesis."
Are AARD's reported interactors a coherent partner set?
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Seven of AARD's fifteen reported partners carry a coiled-coil feature - a 4.6-fold enrichment over the 10.1% feature background among reviewed human proteins (binomial P = 3.3e-04; 9/15 and 5.6-fold on the looser feature-or-keyword criterion, measured against its own keyword background) - and the set spans 14 top-level subcellular compartments, including three syntaxins and two keratins. That is the signature of promiscuous coiled-coil association in yeast two-hybrid rather than a coherent partner set.
"If the partners come from unrelated compartments but share coiled-coil architecture, the assay explains the set better than any function does."
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AARD's own family offers no inference route either: all 10 reviewed members of PANTHER PTHR32289 (the FAM167 family, InterPro IPR051771) lack a UniProt FUNCTION statement, so guilt-by-association across paralogs is unavailable - not because AARD lacks a family, but because the entire family is uncharacterised.
"Guilt-by-association across paralogs is therefore unavailable for AARD - not because it lacks a family, but because the whole family is uncharacterised."
Affinage mechanistic annotation for AARD (human)
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Machine-fetched Affinage record (trust gates passed) describing AARD as a Sertoli cell-specific transcriptional target of androgen signalling, and stating explicitly that no molecular activity, interaction partners or cellular function have been characterised.
"no molecular activity, interaction partners, or cellular function for AARD have been characterized in the available corpus"