This gene was initially thought to represent a pseudogene of galectin 9; however, this transcript has good exon-intron structure and encodes a predicted protein of the same size as and highly similar to galectin 9. This gene is one of two similar loci on chromosome 17p similar to galectin 9 and now thought to be protein-encoding. This gene is the more centromeric gene. [provided by RefSeq, Jul 2008].