Fragile X Mental Retardation Protein (FMRP) is an RNA-binding protein that plays an essential role in cognitive brain function. Mutations in the FMR1 gene, which codes for FMRP, can result in fragile X syndrome, autism, as well as other cognitive deficits (Brown et al.,1998, Goodlin-Jones et al., 2004). Phosphorylation of the highly conserved Ser499 has been shown to trigger hierarchical phosphorylation of nearby serines and may play a role in suppressing target mRNA translation (Ceman et al., 2003, Narayanan et al. 2008).
