Fibulin 2 (FBLN2)

Fibulin-2 is an extracellular matrix protein, which belongs to the fibulin family. This protein binds various extracellular ligands and calcium. It may play a role during organ development, in particular, during the differentiation of heart, skeletal and neuronal structures. Alternatively spliced transcript variants encoding different isoforms have been identified.The protein predicted from the cDNA obtained from a mouse fibroblast library consisted of a 1,195-residue polypeptide preceded by a 26-residue signal peptide. Except for 2 additional EGF-like repeats, the COOH-terminal region showed 43% sequence identity with fibulin-1. The NH2-terminal 408 residues, unique to fibulin-2, showed no sequence homology to other known proteins and presumably formed 2 additional domains that differ in their cysteine content.