Angiopoietin 4 (ANGPT4)

Using homology-based cloning approaches, Valenzuela et al. (1999) identified 2 novel angiopoietins: angiopoietin-3 (Angpt3) in mouse, and angiopoietin-4 (ANGPT4) in human. They also identified several more distantly related sequences that did not seem to be true angiopoietins in that they did not bind to TIE receptors. Although angiopoietin-3 and angiopoietin-4 are more structurally diverged from each other than are the mouse and human versions of angiopoietin-1 and angiopoietin-2, they appear to represent the mouse and human counterparts of the same gene locus, as revealed in chromosomal localization studies of all the angiopoietins in mouse and human. The structural divergence of angiopoietin-3 and angiopoietin-4 appeared to underlie the diverging functions of these counterparts.