Schlafen family members are preferentially expressed in lymphoid tissues and are differentially regulated during thymocyte maturation. Schlafen proteins function as suppressors of cell growth and are thought to play a role in the maintenance of T cell quiescence. The prototype member of the Schlafen family, Slfn1, is transcriptionally unregulated during thymocyte positive selection, and the induction of Slfn1 induces a G0/G1 arrest, suggesting that Slfn1 participates in the regulation of cell cycle and potentially acts as a determining factor for apoptosis. These proteins all contain a largely conserved core domain within the center of the sequence, and yet they are substantially diversified at the N terminus. Slfn14 (Schlafen family member 14) is a 912 amino acid protein belonging to the Schlafen family. Slfn14 exists as two alternatively spliced isoforms and is encoded by a gene mapping to human chromosome 17q12.
