ID:ASIP_HUMAN DESCRIPTION: RecName: Full=Agouti-signaling protein; Short=ASP; AltName: Full=Agouti switch protein; Flags: Precursor; FUNCTION: Involved in the regulation of melanogenesis. The binding of ASP to MC1R precludes alpha-MSH initiated signaling and thus blocks production of cAMP, leading to a down-regulation of eumelanogenesis (brown/black pigment) and thus increasing synthesis of pheomelanin (yellow/red pigment). In higher primates, agouti may affect the quality of hair pigmentation rather than its pattern of deposition. Could well play a role in neuroendocrine aspects of melanocortin action. May have some functional role in regulating the lipid metabolism with adipocytes. SUBCELLULAR LOCATION: Secreted. TISSUE SPECIFICITY: Expressed in adipose tissue, testis, ovary and heart and at lower levels in liver, kidney and foreskin. DOMAIN: The presence of a 'disulfide through disulfide knot' structurally defines this protein as a knottin. POLYMORPHISM: Genetic variants in ASIP define the skin/hair/eye pigmentation variation locus 9 (SHEP9) [MIM:611742]. Hair, eye and skin pigmentation are among the most visible examples of human phenotypic variation, with a broad normal range that is subject to substantial geographic stratification. In the case of skin, individuals tend to have lighter pigmentation with increasing distance from the equator. By contrast, the majority of variation in human eye and hair color is found among individuals of European ancestry, with most other human populations fixed for brown eyes and black hair. SIMILARITY: Contains 1 agouti domain.
The RNAfold program from the Vienna RNA Package is used to perform the secondary structure predictions and folding calculations. The estimated folding energy is in kcal/mol. The more negative the energy, the more secondary structure the RNA is likely to have.
ModBase Predicted Comparative 3D Structure on P42127
Front
Top
Side
The pictures above may be empty if there is no ModBase structure for the protein. The ModBase structure frequently covers just a fragment of the protein. You may be asked to log onto ModBase the first time you click on the pictures. It is simplest after logging in to just click on the picture again to get to the specific info on that model.
Orthologous Genes in Other Species
Orthologies between human, mouse, and rat are computed by taking the best BLASTP hit, and filtering out non-syntenic hits. For more distant species reciprocal-best BLASTP hits are used. Note that the absence of an ortholog in the table below may reflect incomplete annotations in the other species rather than a true absence of the orthologous gene.
US Server
Sequence and Links to Tools and Databases 
Common Gene Haplotype Alleles 
