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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Jun 7.
Published in final edited form as: ILAR J. 2011 Jan;52(3):321–328. doi: 10.1093/ilar.52.3.321

Figure 1.

Figure 1

The pentraxin family (adapted from figure 1 in Garlanda et al. 2005). The carboxy (C)-terminal of pentraxins contains a conserved pentraxin domain (~200 amino acids [aa] long) including an 8 aa sequence, HxCxS/TWxS, shared by all family members and called the pentraxin signature. Sequence homology among all family members is relatively high in the pentraxin domain, but not in the N-terminal domain. For example, among humans the N-terminal sequence of long pentraxin 3 (PTX3) has only 10% identity with the NP1 N-terminal domain sequence, whereas identity in the N-terminal domain among the neuronal pentraxins (Narp, NP1, and NPR) is higher, between 28% and 38%. The neuronal pentraxins function in the nervous system, and the nonneuronal pentraxins (CRP, SAP, PTX3, and PTX4) function in the immune system (Garlanda et al. 2005). The color image is available in the online posting of this article at www.ilarjournal.com. CRP, C-reactive protein; NPR, neuronal pentraxin receptor; PTX4, long pentraxin 4; SAP, serum amyloid protein; TM, transmembrane domain