1. CTRP3B contains a highly conserved N-linked glycosylation site that is not present on the original splice variant, CTRP3A (51). At this time the functional significance of the splice variants of CTRP3 are unknown as research has focused almost exclusively on CTRP3A. Regardless, both CTRP3A and CTRP3B are secreted proteins which are detectable in human serum. Although only CTRP3A has been detected in mouse serum, both variants are expressed in mouse adipose tissue (51, 75). One of the reasons for the difficulty in detecting the CTRP3B variant is that unlike CTRP3A, CTRP3B degrades rapidly unless it forms a higher order oligomer with CTRP3A (51).
