Background
Present mainly in the mitochondrial compartment of peripheral tissues, the protein encoded by this gene interacts with some benzodiazepines and has different affinities than its endogenous counterpart. The protein is a key factor in the flow of cholesterol into mitochondria to permit the initiation of steroid hormone synthesis. Alternatively spliced transcript variants have been reported; one of the variants lacks an internal exon and is considered non-coding, and the other variants encode the same protein. [provided by RefSeq, Feb 2012],
Function
protein targeting, protein targeting to mitochondrion, porphyrin metabolic process, porphyrin biosynthetic process,heme biosynthetic process, ion transport, anion transport, mitochondrial transport, intracellular protein transport,apoptosis, mitochondrion organization, protein localization, steroid metabolic process, cell death, cell proliferation,programmed cell death, protein transport, death, protein import, heterocycle biosynthetic process, regulation of lipid transport, regulation of sterol transport, regulation of cholesterol transport, tetrapyrrole metabolic process,tetrapyrrole biosynthetic process, protein localization in organelle, cellular protein localization, heme metabolic process, pigment metabolic process, nitrogen compound biosynthetic process, establishment of protein localization,pigment biosynthetic process, intracellular transport, cofactor metabolic process, cofacto
