About CAPS / Calcyphosine:
Calcyphosine (CAPS) is a gene that encodes proteins in humans. It can also contribute to the regulation of ion transport. Examples of diseases that are linked with CAPS are Malignant Ependymoma and Pediatric Ependymoma. One protein that was described as an essential protein in the dog thyroid, was previously referred to as antigen R2D5 in rabbits. Alternative splicing of CAPS genes generates transcript variants.
Calcyphosine for calcium binding is a target for cyclic AMP and Ca2+ phosphatidylinositol cascades that were first isolated from a dog's thyroid, rabbit and the human brain.
CAPS Function
As a calcium-binding protein with four EF-hand domains, calcyphosine was initially identified as a thyroid protein p24, usually present in epithelium cells and the central nervous system. In the follicular cells of the thyroid, synthesis and phosphorylation of calcyphosine occur as a result of stimulation by thyrotropin and cAMP agonists.
Calcyphosine Mechanism
To confirm whether human recombinant calcyphosine undergoes a calcium-2 (Ca2+) dependent conformational change, researchers loaded purified CAPS onto a column of Phenyl Sepharose in the presence of Ca2+ ions. Elution results showed that CAPS bound to the matrix could be eluted with EGTA. Spectroscopic studies of the calcyphosine monomer’s secondary structure showed that CAPS monomers change their conformation in a calcium-dependent manner.
CAPS Analytical and therapeutic concept
Northern blot analysis has shown that calcyphosine messenger RNA is relatively less abundant in humans than canine thyrocytes. While the exact function of calcyphosine is not fully understood, CAPS can be implicated in cross-signaling between cascades to contact cellular proliferation and differentiation.