Ring Finger Protein 38 (RNF38)

RING finger protein 38 is a protein with a coiled-coil motif and a RING-H2 motif (C3H2C2) at its carboxy-terminus. The RING motif is a zinc-binding domain found in a large set of proteins playing roles in diverse cellular processes including oncogenesis, development, signal transduction, and apoptosis. Alternate transcriptional splice variants, encoding different isoforms, have been characterized.The deduced 432-amino acid protein has a calculated molecular mass of 48.5 kD and shares high similarity with the putative rat, mouse, Drosophila, and Arabidopsis homologs. RNF38 contains a predicted coiled-coil domain, a KIL motif, and a RING-H2 domain. Northern blot analysis detected a 6.8-kb transcript in all tissues examined with higher expression in testis and lower expression detected in liver.