Prkar1a - protein kinase, cAMP dependent regulatory, type I, alpha

The encoded protein is a regulatory subunit of the cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) complex, which is responsible for transducing most of the cAMP signals in eukaryotic cells. The inactive PKA complex contains two regulatory and two catalytic subunits. Binding of cAMP dissociates the complex, allowing monomeric catalytic subunits to phosphorylate cytosolic proteins or induce gene expression in the nucleus. Several transcript variants encoding the same protein have been found for this gene. [provided by RefSeq, Sep 2015]