Vinculin
Mammalian protein found in Homo sapiens / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dear Wikiwand AI, let's keep it short by simply answering these key questions:
Can you list the top facts and stats about Vinculin?
Summarize this article for a 10 year old
In mammalian cells, vinculin is a membrane-cytoskeletal protein in focal adhesion plaques that is involved in linkage of integrin adhesion molecules to the actin cytoskeleton. Vinculin is a cytoskeletal protein associated with cell-cell and cell-matrix junctions, where it is thought to function as one of several interacting proteins involved in anchoring F-actin to the membrane.
Discovered independently by Benny Geiger[5] and Keith Burridge,[6] its sequence is 20%–30% similar to α-catenin, which serves a similar function.
Binding alternately to talin or α-actinin, vinculin's shape and, as a consequence, its binding properties are changed. The vinculin gene occurs as a single copy and what appears to be no close relative to take over functions in its absence. Its splice variant metavinculin (see below) also needs vinculin to heterodimerize and work in a dependent fashion.