ADNP: Proteins and Enzymes

ADNP (Activity-dependent neuroprotective protein-1) is a member of a small family of VIP-induced neurotrophic factors. Although its predicted MW is 124 kDa, it runs anomalously at 150 kDa in SDS-PAGE. ADNP is known to be expressed by endothelium, astrocytes, neurons, macrophages, monocytes and B cells, and serves to down-regulate inflammation in immune cells, while acting to promote neuronal survival in response to stress or injury. Human ADNP is 1102 amino acids (aa) in length. It has no definitive signal sequence, but is reported to be found both extracellularly and intracellularly, where it shuttles between cytoplasm and nucleus. Full-length ADNP contains nine consecutive C2H2-type zinc finger regions (aa 74-686), followed by a DNA-binding homeobox domain (aa 754-814). There are 12 utilized phosphoserine sites, two C-terminal acetylated lysines, an NLS (aa 716-733), an NES (aa 788-804) and one NAPVSIPQ (NAP) motif (aa 354-361) that likely mediates the ADNP neuroprotective function. Over aa 941-1102, human ADNP shares 93% aa identity with mouse ADNP.