zona pellucida (ZP) domain

Introduction

A domain of about 260 amino acid-residues found in a number of receptor-like eukaryotic glycoproteins with a large extracellular region followed by either a transmembrane region & very short cytoplasmic region or by a GPI-anchor. The ZP domain is found in the C-terminal section of the extracellular region. It contains 8 conserved cysteines probably involved in disulfide bonds.

Binding of sperm proteins to the zona pellucida occurs via ZP domain.

More general terms

• exoplasmic motif
• domain