Academic Unit of Respiratory Medicine, Department of Infection and Immunity, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2JF, UK.
Biochem Soc Trans. 2011 Aug;39(4):961-5. doi: 10.1042/BST0390961.
PLUNC (palate, lung and nasal epithelium clone) proteins make up the largest branch of the BPI (bactericidal/permeability-increasing protein)/LBP (lipopolysaccharide-binding protein) family of lipid-transfer proteins. PLUNCs make up one of the most rapidly evolving mammalian protein families and exhibit low levels of sequence similarity coupled with multiple examples of species-specific gene acquisition and gene loss. Vertebrate genomes contain multiple examples of genes that do not meet our original definition of what is required to be a member of the PLUNC family, namely conservation of exon numbers/sizes, overall protein size, genomic location and the presence of a conserved disulfide bond. This suggests that evolutionary forces have continued to act on the structure of this conserved domain in what are likely to be functionally important ways.
PLUNC（腭、肺和鼻上皮细胞克隆）蛋白构成了 BPI（杀菌/通透性增加蛋白）/LBP（脂多糖结合蛋白）脂质转位蛋白家族中最大的分支。PLUNCs 构成了哺乳动物进化最快的蛋白质家族之一，其表现出较低的序列相似性，并伴有多个物种特异性基因获得和基因丢失的例子。脊椎动物基因组中包含多个不符合我们最初定义的基因，这些基因不符合 PLUNC 家族成员的要求，即外显子数量/大小、全长蛋白质大小、基因组位置和保守二硫键的存在。这表明进化力量继续以可能在功能上重要的方式作用于这个保守结构域的结构。
