Glutathione Peroxidase 3, Plasma (GPX3)

It has been reported thatGPX3 protects from CD95-induced apoptosis in cultured breast cancer cells and inhibits 5-lipoxygenase in blood cells, and its overexpression delays endothelial cell growth and increases resistance to toxic challenges. This protein is one of only a few proteins known in higher vertebrates to contain selenocysteine, which occurs at the active site of glutathione peroxidase and is coded by the nonsense (stop) codon TGA. In addition, this protein is characterized in a polyalanine sequence polymorphism in the N-terminal region, which includes three alleles with five, six or seven alanine (ALA) repeats in this sequence. The allele with five ALA repeats is significantly associated with breast cancer risk. Two alternatively spliced transcript variants encoding distinct isoforms have been found for this gene.