THE P-DOMAIN OR TREFOIL MOTIF - A ROLE IN RENEWAL AND PATHOLOGY OF MUCOUS EPITHELIA

By analogy with epidermal growth factor and EGF-like repeats, the P-domain, or trefoil motif, is a characteristic shuffled module containing six invariant cysteine residues that forms the basic unit for a family of mucin-associated peptides. These P-domain peptides are potential modulators of cell growth and they are also expressed under certain pathological conditions. Furthermore, P-domains have been found as components of extracellular mosaic proteins including certain mucins, where they are thought to play a role either in protein-protein or in lectin-like interactions.