Bax Mouse, Unlabeled, Clone: 6A7, BD

Description

• The Bcl-2 family members are involved in mediating programmed cell death or apoptosis, and share two highly conserved functional regions, Bcl-2 homology 1 and 2 (BH1 and BH2)
• Several of the family members including Bcl-2 act as inhibitors of apoptosis, whereas others such as Bax promote cell death
• It is thought that protein-protein interactions between Bcl-2 family members play an important role in their function
• For example, Bax may form homodimers or heterodimers with either Bcl-2 and Bcl-XL (long)
• Bax homodimers is thought to promote cell death, whereas Bax heterodimerization with either Bcl-2 and Bcl-XL appears to block cell death
• When Bax is present in excess, it can counteract the ability of Bcl-2 to inhibit cell death
• Bax expression has been identified in a variety of tissues, including lung, stomach, kidney, thymus, lymph nodes, bone marrow, spleen, heart, exocrine pancreas, and brain
• Liver, kidney, and the exocrine pancreas have been found to contain little or no Bcl-2
• The Bax gene potentially encodes three different proteins Bax-α (21 kDa), Bax-β (24 kDa) and Bax-γ (5 kDa)
• Bax-α is the most common transcript.