Description
Product Characteristics:
Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS) is a pleiotropic genetic disorder characterized by obesity, photoreceptor degeneration, polydactyly, hypogenitalism, renal abnormalities, and developmental delay. Other associated clinical findings in BBS patients include diabetes, hypertension, and congenital heart defects. BBS is a heterogeneous disorder, BBS genes map to eight genetic loci and encode eight proteins, BBS1-BBS8. Five BBS genes encode basal body or cilia proteins, suggesting that BBS is a ciliary dysfunction disorder. BBS4 is expressed in the olfactory epithelium and localizes to the centriolar satellites of centrosomes and basal bodies of primary cilia. BBS4 regulates the p150 subunit of the dynein transport machinery (DCTN1) to attract pericentriolar material-1 protein (PCM1) and its associated components to the satellites. Loss of BBS4 is correlated with obesity caused by abnormal lipid profiles, liver dysfunction, elevated insulin, and abnormal leptin levels.
Subcellular location: Cytoplasm, Cell membrane
Synonyms: Bardet Biedl syndrome 4 protein, Bardet-Biedl syndrome 4 protein, Bbs4, BBS4_HUMAN.
Target Information: This gene is a member of the Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS) gene family. Bardet-Biedl syndrome is an autosomal recessive disorder characterized by severe pigmentary retinopathy, obesity, polydactyly, renal malformation and mental retardation. The proteins encoded by BBS gene family members are structurally diverse. The similar phenotypes exhibited by mutations in BBS gene family members are likely due to the protein's shared roles in cilia formation and function. Many BBS proteins localize to the basal bodies, ciliary axonemes, and pericentriolar regions of cells. BBS proteins may also be involved in intracellular trafficking via microtubule-related transport. The protein encoded by this gene has sequence similarity to O-linked N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) transferases in plants and archaebacteria and in human forms a multi-protein 'BBSome' complex with six other BBS proteins. Alternative splice variants have been described but their predicted protein products have not been experimentally verified.[provided by RefSeq, Jan 2009]