| Health / Medical Topics |
Small Inducible Cytokine D1
Fractalkine, encoded by the cytokine D1 gene, is the first member of a fourth branch of the chemokine superfamily. Unlike other known chemokines, fractalkine is a type 1 membrane protein with a signal peptide, a chemokine domain, a stalk region containing 17 degenerate mucin-like repeats, a transmembrane segment and a cytoplasmic domain. The extracellular domain of fractalkine is released into the supernatants of transfected cells as a 95 kDa glycoprotein, possibly by proteolysis at the dibasic cleavage site proximal to the membrane, to generate soluble fractalkine. mRNA expression is most abundant in the brain and heart, but is also present at lower levels in other tissues tested except peripheral blood where most chemokines are highly expressed. The expression of fractalkine in microglia, endothelial and fibroblastic cells is upregulated by inflammatory signals. (NCI Thesaurus)
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