1997年,Iovanna等在研究急性胰腺损伤的分子变化中首先克隆得到了p8基因。人的p8分子是一个由82个氨基酸组成的小分子核蛋白,分子内含有一个保守的核定位序列,蛋白质二级结构与HMG—I/Y蛋白十分相似,该分子在包括胰腺、肝脏、肾脏在内的诸多脏器受到损伤刺激后,能够在短时间内迅速、高水平地上调,因此被认为是一个应激分子(stress associated protein)。随后的研究显示该基因具有复杂的表达调节模式,在个体发育、肿瘤形成、组织损伤、心肌肥大以及糖尿病性肾病中都发挥重要作用,并且其功能表现在不同组织、细胞中不尽相同。
In 1997, Iovanna reported the cloning of p8 gene in a process of studying the molecular changes in acute pancreatic injury. Human p8 is a small nuclear protein consisting of 82 amino acids with a conserved nuclear localization sequence. The secondary structure of p8 is similar to that of HMG-I/Y proteins. Since high level expression of p8 could be rapidly induced by injury stimuli in several tissues such as pancreas, liver, kidney and the like, p8 is regarded as a stress associated protein. After that, many studies have reported that p8 could be regulated by multiple factors, and play important roles in diverse biological and pathological processes such as development, tumorigenesis, tissue injury, heart hypertrohpy and diabetic nephropathy and the like. In addition, the functions of p8 varied in different tissues.