RAB7, Member RAS Oncogene Family Like Protein 1 (RAB7L1)

RAB proteins, which constitute a family of RAS-related signaling molecules, are small GTP-binding proteins that play important roles in the regulation of exocytotic and endocytotic pathways. By sequence analysis of randomly selected ESTs from a human placenta cDNA library, Shimizu et al. (1997) identified RAB7-like-1 (RAB7L1), a gene that shows sequence similarity to RAB7. The full-length RAB7L1 cDNA encodes a deduced 203-amino acid protein with 35% identity to RAB7 in a 178-amino acid overlap. RAB7L1 contains the 4 GTP-binding domains that are conserved in RAS proteins, although 2 of its domains have amino acid substitutions at conserved sites. Northern blot analysis detected a 3.6-kb RAB7L1 transcript in all human tissues examined.