ELAV Like Protein 3 (ELAVL3)

A member of the ELAVL protein family, ELAV-like 3 is a neural-specific RNA-binding protein which contains three RNP-type RNA recognition motifs. The observation that ELAVL3 is one of several Hu antigens (neuronal-specific RNA-binding proteins) recognized by the anti-Hu serum antibody present in sera from patients with paraneoplastic encephalomyelitis and sensory neuronopathy (PEM/PSN) suggests it has a role in neurogenesis. By screening a hippocampus expression library with this serum, they isolated cDNAs encoding a protein that they called PLE21. The predicted 350-amino acid protein contains 3 RNA recognition motifs (RRMs). PLE21 shares 82% and 54% protein sequence identity with the human neural autoantigen HuD and Drosophila ELAV protein, respectively.