Raymond et al. (1999) sought other genes with DM domains within the minimal sex reversal region of 9p. Using a degenerate PCR strategy, they isolated a cDNA clone encoding a protein with a DM domain similar to that of DMRT1 from a human adult testis cDNA library. This cDNA, DMRT2, encodes a 226-amino acid peptide sharing 80% amino acid identity with DMRT1 in the core region of the DM domain.
The 2 proteins also have an additional 29-amino acid conserved DM domain region.The authors concluded that the results provide further support for the presence of a sex-determining gene(s) on distal 9p and favor the possibility of DMRT1 and/or DMRT2 being the sex-determining gene(s).