Cæruloplasmin - the Pathology
There is an escalating list of diseases associated with copper, and since 90% of copper in blood is associated with caeruloplasmin, it has a very large role in pathology. As yet the membrane bound versions of caeruloplasmin are very ill defined.
An intriguing observation is that the structure of human caeruloplasmin (hCP) provides a model for blood clotting factor VIII, and that the protein domains of factor VIII have a considerable kinship to of those of hCP:
the overall sequence identity between hCP and the
A-domains of factor VIII is around 34%