Polyclonal antibody to BAG3

The BAG proteins are a family of chaperone regulators that modulate a number of diverse processes including proliferation, survival, stress responses, tumorigenesis, neuronal differentiation, growth arrest and apoptosis (reviewed Takayama and Reed, 2001; Doong et al, 2002, and Doukhanina et al. 2006) . BAG proteins have been characterized as co-chaperones and interact with the chaperone heat shock proteins 70, both constitutive Hsc70 and inducible Hsp70. BAG proteins bind through their BAG domain to the ATPase domain of Hsc70/Hsp70, and can modulate either positively or negatively the functions of the Hsc70/Hsp70 chaperone proteins. The BAG domain has been shown to contribute to the anti-apoptotic activity of BAG- family proteins. The anti-apoptotic activities of BAG-family proteins may be dependent on their interactions with Hsc70/Asp70 and/or binding to Bcl-2. In addition to the conserved BAG domain, BAG-family proteins also contain additional domains which enable them to interact with specific target proteins or to target them to specific locations within cells.