Death Effector Domain Containing Protein (DEDD)

DEDD encodes a protein that contains a death effector domain (DED). DED is a protein-protein interaction domain shared by adaptors, regulators and executors of the programmed cell death pathway. Overexpression of this gene was shown to induce weak apoptosis. Upon stimulation, this protein was found to translocate from cytoplasm to nucleus and colocalize with UBTF, a basal factor required for RNA polymerase I transcription, in the nucleolus. At least three transcript variants encoding the same protein have been found for this gene.

Human DEDD localized to the cytoplasm in a nonapoptotic human leukemic cell line, but translocated to the nucleus upon induction of apoptosis, where it colocalized with the nucleolar transcription factor UBTF .