Rosenberg and Dyer (1996) identified ribonuclease 6, which they referred to as RNase k6, as an unexpected result of their efforts to trace the evolutionary history of the ribonuclease gene family. RNASE6 encodes a 150-amino acid polypeptide most closely related to ribonuclease 2 (RNASE2; 131410); these 2 genes share 47% amino acid sequence identity. Other human ribonuclease family members include pancreatic ribonuclease (RNASE1; 180440), ribonuclease 3 (RNASE3; 131398), angiogenin (ANG; 105850), and ribonuclease L (RNASE4; 601030). RNASE6 mRNA was detected in all human tissues tested, with lung representing the most abundant source. The authors used a PCR-based technique to map RNASE6 to chromosome 14.

UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot: RNAS6_HUMAN, Q93091