Ubiquitin Specific Peptidase 5 (USP5)

Ubiquitin dependent proteolysis is a complex pathway of protein metabolism implicated in such diverse cellular functions as maintenance of chromatin structure, receptor function, and degradation of abnormal proteins. A late step of the process involves disassembly of the polyubiquitin chains on degraded proteins into ubiquitin monomers.

USP5 disassembles branched polyubiquitin chains by a sequential exo mechanism, starting at the proximal end of the chain . A total of 117 kb of genomic sequence and approximately 11 kb of cDNA sequence was obtained. They identified in this sequence 8 genes, including CD4 and ISOT. Using a battery of strategies, the exon/intron boundaries, splice variants, and tissue expression patterns of the genes were determined.