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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1989 Apr;86(8):2799–2803. doi: 10.1073/pnas.86.8.2799

Structural homology of complement protein C6 with other channel-forming proteins of complement.

D N Chakravarti 1, B Chakravarti 1, C A Parra 1, H J Muller-Eberhard 1
PMCID: PMC287006  PMID: 2468158

Abstract

The amino acid sequence of the amino-terminal half of the complement protein C6 has been found to show overall structural homology with the homologous regions of the channel-forming proteins C7, C8 alpha, C8 beta, and C9. In addition, two specific cysteine-rich segments common to the amino-terminal regions of C7, C8 alpha, C8 beta, and C9 also occur in their expected positions in C6, suggesting functional significance. Two cDNA clones encoding C6 were isolated from a human liver library in the bacteriophage vector lambda gt11. The predicted protein sequence contains an apparent initiation methionine and a putative signal peptide of 21 residues, as well as a site for N-glycosylation at residue 303. The sequence of the C6 protein reported here has 47-52% similarity with C7, C8 alpha, C8 beta, and C9, as well as 31-38% similarity with thrombospondin, thrombomodulin, and low density lipoprotein receptor. The sequence data have been interpreted by using computer algorithms for estimation of average hydrophobicity and secondary structure.

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Selected References

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