This gene is located within a region of a segmental duplication on chromosome 16p. The product of this gene belongs to the eukaryotic subfamily of the BolA-like proteins. This gene encodes the BolA-like protein 2. The BolA-like proteins are widely conserved from prokaryotes to eukaryotes, and these proteins seem to be involved in cell proliferation or cell-cycle regulation. This duplicated region contains a complete copy of the short splice variant of the BOLA2 gene and a partial copy of the long splice variant of the BOLA2 gene.