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Description

Macrophage receptor MARCO (UniProt: Q9UEW3, also known as macrophage receptor with collagenous structure, Scavenger receptor class A member 2) is encoded by the MARCO (also known as SCARA2) gene (Gene ID: 8685) in human. MARCO is strongly expressed in macrophages of several tissues in humans with sepsis. It is a scavenger receptor that is readily upregulated following bacterial infection. Hence, it forms a back-up system through which the organism can quickly arm more cells with highly efficient phagocytosing receptors. MARCO is a single-pass type II membrane protein that binds both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria via an extracellular, C-terminal, scavenger receptor cysteine-rich (SRCR) domain. The bacteria-binding region is localized immediately proximal to the cysteine-rich region of domain V. Human and mouse MARCO exhibit about 68% sequence identity. However, the human MARCO subunit chain differs from the mouse chain in that it does not have any cysteine residues outside the cysteine-rich domain V, whereas the mouse chain has one cysteine residue within the intracellular domain I and two in the extracellular spacer domain III. (Ref.: Elomaa, O., et al. (1998). J. Biol. Chem. 273(8): 4350-4538).