Ankyrins are a ubiquitously expressed family of intracellular adaptor proteins involved in targeting diverse proteins to specialized membrane domains in both the plasma membrane and the endoplasmic reticulum(Bennett and Baines, 2001). Vertebrate ankyrin polypeptides fall into three classes, each containing multiple alternatively spliced variants: ankyrins-R (R for restricted distribution, and the prototypic ankyrin first characterized in erythrocytes;also expressed in a subset of neurons and striated muscle) encoded by Ank1 on human chromosome 8p11; ankyrins-B (B for broadly expressed;first characterized in brain, but now recognized in most cell types) encoded by Ank2 on human chromosome 4q25-27; and ankyrins-G (G for giant size and general expression, first characterized as a 480 kDa polypeptide in the nervous system; expressed in most cell types) encoded by Ank3, on human chromosome 10q21. Although ankyrin genes are not present in the completed genomes of yeast or plants, simple metazoans including Drosophila melanogaster (...

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