A Comprehensive Overview of the Vertebrate p24 Family: Identification of a Novel Tissue-Specifically Expressed Member

• Published in: Molecular biology and evolution Vol. 26; no. 8; pp. 1707 - 1714
• Main Authors: Strating, Jeroen R.P.M., van Bakel, Nick H.M., Leunissen, Jack A.M., Martens, Gerard J.M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Oxford University Press 01-08-2009
• Subjects: Animals; Carrier Proteins - genetics; coated transport vesicles; coatomer; Codon, Terminator; complex; emp24p; endoplasmic-reticulum; Evolutionary biology; Female; Gene Expression Regulation; golgi-apparatus; Humans; Membrane Proteins - genetics; Mice; Molecular biology; multiple sequence alignment; Phylogeny; Proteins; putative cargo receptors; secretory pathway; transmembrane protein; Transport processes; Vertebrates; Vertebrates - genetics; p23; p25; p27; p26; tp24; phylogeny; early secretory pathway; evolutionary tree; tissue distribution; gp25L; TMED
• ISSN: 0737-4038; 1537-1719
• DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msp099

The members of the p24 protein family have an important but unclear role in transport processes in the early secretory pathway. The p24 family consists of four subfamilies (α, β, γ, and δ), whereby the exact composition of the family varies among species. Despite more than 15 years of p24 research, the vertebrate p24 family is still surprisingly ill characterized. Here, we describe the human, mouse, Xenopus, and zebrafish orthologues of 10 p24 family members and a new member that we term p24γ
5. Of these eleven p24 family members, nine are conserved throughout the vertebrate lineage, whereas two (p24γ
4 and p24δ
2) occur in some but not all vertebrates. We further show that all p24 proteins are widely expressed in mouse, except for p24α
1 and p24γ
5 that display restricted expression patterns. Thus, we present for the first time a comprehensive overview of the phylogeny and expression of the vertebrate p24 protein family.