Blood, Vol. 94 No. 11 (December 1), 1999:
pp. 3947-3950
Characterization of the Murine Platelet 
IIb Gene and Encoded cDNA
Michael A. Thornton and
Mortimer Poncz
From the Department of Pediatrics, University of Pennsylvania School
of Medicine, Philadelphia, PA.
The 
IIb/
3 receptor is central to platelet aggregation.
Biological studies of this receptor have been limited by the inability to reproduce IIb/3 function in a cell system. Increasingly, efforts are being directed at studies of this receptor in mice models.
The structure of murine (m) 3 has been reported. We now have
sequenced the mIIb gene and found that it has the same size and
organization as the human gene. The exon/intron borders are reported
here, as are the distances between exons. mIIb protein is 1,033 amino acids (aa), 7 and 5 aa shorter than human (h) and rodent (r)
IIb, respectively, with 79% and 90% homology, respectively. As
part of the comparative analysis of the 3 known IIb chains included
in this report, we found that a particular region of the IIb
N-terminal -propeller is highly conserved and speculate that it
directly participates in ligand binding.
