Syntaxin 17 (STX17)

By carrying out a yeast 2-hybrid screen with syntaxin-3 as bait, Steegmaier et al. (1998) isolated partial human cDNAs encoding a protein that they designated syntaxin-17. They used the human cDNAs to isolate rat cDNAs corresponding to the complete syntaxin-17 coding region. The predicted rat syntaxin-17 protein contains an unusual 52-amino acid domain following the C-terminal transmembrane domain. When expressed in mammalian cells, epitope-tagged rat syntaxin-17 exhibited a pattern that partially coincided with endoplasmic reticulum markers, but that was clearly distinct from the typical tubular-reticular pattern. The authors suggested that syntaxin-17 may function in a different type of membrane trafficking pathway from other syntaxins.