NBK Antibody (N-19): sc-1710

The Bcl-2 gene was isolated at the chromosomal breakpoint of t-bearing follicular B cell lymphomas. Bcl-2 blocks cell death following a variety of stimuli and confers a death-sparing effect to certain hematopoietic cell lines following growth factor withdrawal. Bcl-2 appears to function in several subcellular locations yet lacks any known motifs that would provide insight into its mechanism of action. A protein designated Bax p21 (for Bcl-associated X protein) has extensive amino acid homology with Bcl-2 and both heterodimerizes and homodimerizes with Bcl-2. Overexpression of Bax accelerates apoptotic death. Natural born killer (NBK), also known as Bik, is a protein that is functionally related to Bax, although the two proteins share very little sequence homology. NBK does not contain the conserved Bcl-2 homology domains (BH domains) characteristic of the Bcl-2 family. It does however, share nine amino acids with Bax in a region designated BH3, which may be the critical determinant for the NBK death-promoting activities.