Description
Product Characteristics: IL15 is an immunomodulating cytokine that stimulates the proliferation of T lymphocytes and shares many biological properties with IL2. IL15 exerts its biological activites primarily on T cells. It is also essential in the development, survival and activation of NK cells. Increased expression of IL15 has been implicated with rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowl disease and diseases affiliated with retroviruses HIV and HTLV-I. Human IL15 is biologically active on mouse cells as measured by the dose-dependent stimulation of the proliferation of mouse CTLL cells.
Target Information: The protein encoded by this gene is a cytokine that regulates T and natural killer cell activation and proliferation. This cytokine and interleukine 2 share many biological activities. They are found to bind common hematopoietin receptor subunits, and may compete for the same receptor, and thus negatively regulate each other's activity. The number of CD8+ memory cells is shown to be controlled by a balance between this cytokine and IL2. This cytokine induces the activation of JAK kinases, as well as the phosphorylation and activation of transcription activators STAT3, STAT5, and STAT6. Studies of the mouse counterpart suggested that this cytokine may increase the expression of apoptosis inhibitor BCL2L1/BCL-x(L), possibly through the transcription activation activity of STAT6, and thus prevent apoptosis. Alternatively spliced transcript variants of this gene have been reported. [provided by RefSeq, Feb 2011]