※ Trk family introduction

    Trk family belongs to receptor tyrosine kinase. Three members have been identified in human genome, TrkA, TrkB and TrkC. Structure analysis show that Trks share a common organization. The extracellular region contains two cystein clusters which is separated by a leucine-rich motifs (LRM), and two immunoglobulin-like domains. The intracellular region contains a TK domain. Trks play an important role in a variety of cellular processes, including neuronal survival, differentiation and plasticity. For instance, knockout of Trk will lead to the reduced axon outgrowth and increased cell death, mammalian Trks regulate the convert of short-term plasticity to long-term plasticity (1).

Reference
1. Sossin, W.S. (2006) Tracing the evolution and function of the Trk superfamily of receptor tyrosine kinases. Brain Behav Evol, 68, 145-156. PMID: 16912468