Glycophorin C (GYPC)

Glycophorin C (GPC) is a single polypeptide chain of 128 amino acids and is encoded by a gene on the long arm of Chromosome 2 (2q14-q21). Two isoforms are known and the gene is expressed in a wide variety of tissues including kidney, thymus, stomach, breast, adult liver and erythrocyte. In the non erythroid cell lines, expression is lower than in the erythrocyte and the protein is differentially glycosylated. In the erythrocyte glycophorin C makes up ~4% of the membrane sialoglycoproteins.
The GPC gene is organized in four exons distributed over 13.5 kilobase pairs of DNA and contains two directly repeated domains 3.4 kilobase pairs long which may be derived from a recent duplication of a single ancestral domain.