Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) is a lipid kinase that phosphorylates phosphatidylinositol and similar compounds, creating second messengers important in growth signaling pathways. PI3K functions as a heterodimer of a regulatory and a catalytic subunit. The protein encoded by this gene is a regulatory component of PI3K. Two transcript variants, one protein coding and the other non-protein coding, have been found for this gene. [provided by RefSeq, Dec 2012]