The Family of Protein Kinase C: Its Molecular Heterogeneity and Differential Expression

Although protein kinase C (PKC) was once consid-ered as a single entity (Nishizuka 1984), molecular cloning and enzymological nalysis have revealed the existence of multiple subspecies of PKC in a number of mammalian tissues. These subspecies have a common structure closely related to, yet slightly different from, one another. The relative distribution of PKC sub-species varies markedly with different areas of tissues and cell types examined. It is tempting to surmise that each member of this family has a specific function in the various cellular processes that occur during cell-to-cell communication. The heterogeneity of the members of the PKC family is briefly summarized in this paper. The integrated nomenclature used herein for the multiple PKC subspecies reported from various laboratories