The protein encoded by this gene belongs to the tyrosine protein kinase family. Tyrosine protein kinases are important regulators of intracellular signal transduction pathways, mediating cellular proliferation, survival, and development. This gene is highly expressed in fetal tissues and at lower levels in few adult tissues, thus may function in signaling pathways utilized broadly during fetal development, and more selectively in adult tissues. It plays a negative regulatory role in the Ras-Raf1-MAPK pathway, and knockout mice have been shown to develop spontaneous tumors, suggesting a role as a tumor suppressor gene. Alternatively spliced transcript variants encoding different isoforms have been found for this gene. [provided by RefSeq, Oct 2011].
Henderson, Gonzales, Arora, Choudhary, Trent, Von Hoff, Mousses, Azorsa: "High-throughput RNAi screening identifies a role for TNK1 in growth and survival of pancreatic cancer cells." in: Molecular cancer research : MCR, Vol. 9, Issue 6, pp. 724-32, (2011) (PubMed).
Jhiang: "The RET proto-oncogene in human cancers." in: Oncogene, Vol. 19, Issue 49, pp. 5590-7, (2000) (PubMed).
Felschow, Civin, Hoehn: "Characterization of the tyrosine kinase Tnk1 and its binding with phospholipase C-gamma1." in: Biochemical and biophysical research communications, Vol. 273, Issue 1, pp. 294-301, (2000) (PubMed).