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Tetraspanin



Tetraspanins are a family of membrane proteins found in all multicellular eukaryotes.  

Tetraspanins, also called tetraspans or the transmembrane 4 superfamily (TM4SF), have four transmembrane domains, intracellular N and C-termini and two extracellular domains, one short (small extracellular domain or loop (SED/SEL or EC1) and one longer, typically 100 amino acid residues (large extracellular domain/loop (LED/LEL or EC2). Although several protein families have four transmembrane domains, tetraspanins are defined by conserved domains listed under pfam00335.12 [1]. The key features are four or more cysteine residues in the EC2 domain, with two in a highly conserved 'CCG' motif.

Research into this field is relatively recent (less than 20 years) and therefore there is much to learn about the function of specific tetraspanins. Generally, tetraspanins are often thought to act as scaffolding proteins, anchoring multiple proteins to one area of the cell membrane.[1]

Tetraspanins are highly conserved between species. Some tetraspanins can have N-linked glycosylations on the long extracellular loop (LEL, EC2) and palmitoylations at a CXXC motif in their transmembrane region.[2]

There are 34 tetraspanins in mammals, 33 of which have also been identified in humans. Tetraspanins display numerous properties that indicate their physiological importance in cell adhesion, motility, activation and proliferation, as well as their contribution to pathological conditions such as metastasis or viral infection.

A role for tetraspanins in platelets was demonstrated by the bleeding phenotypes of CD151- and TSSC6-deficient mice, which exhibit impaired "outside-in" signalling through alphaIIbbeta3, the major platelet integrin. it is hypothesized that tetraspanins interact with and regulate other platelet receptors. [3]

List of human tetraspanins

Tetraspanin Other Names
TSPAN1 TSP-1
TSPAN2 TSP-2
TSPAN3 TSP-3
TSPAN4 TSP-4, NAG-2
TSPAN5 TSP-5
TSPAN6 TSP-6
TSPAN7 CD231/TALLA-1/A15
TSPAN8 CO-029
TSPAN9 NET-5
TSPAN10 OCULOSPANIN
TSPAN11 CD151-like, may not be expressed in humans
TSPAN12 NET-2
TSPAN13 NET-6
TSPAN14
TSPAN15 NET-7
TSPAN16 TM4-B
TSPAN17
TSPAN18
TSPAN19
TSPAN20 UP1b, UPK1B
TSPAN21 UP1a, UPK1A
TSPAN22 RDS, PRPH2
TSPAN23 ROM1
TSPAN24 CD151
TSPAN25 CD53
TSPAN26 CD37
TSPAN27 CD82
TSPAN28 CD81
TSPAN29 CD9
TSPAN30 CD63
TSPAN31 SAS
TSPAN32 TSSC6
TSPAN33
TSPAN34

See also

References

  1. ^ Hemler, M.E. 2005. Tetraspanin functions and associated microdomains. Nature Molecular Cell Biology Reviews 6: 801-811.
  2. ^ Wright, M.D. and Tomlinson, M.G. (1994) The ins and outs of the transmembrane 4 superfamily. Immunol Today 15, 588-594
  3. ^ Goschnick et al. (2006) Impaired "outside-in" integrin alphaIIbbeta3 signaling and thrombus stability in TSSC6-deficient mice. Blood. 2006;108(6):1911-8.
 
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Tetraspanin". A list of authors is available in Wikipedia.
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