Protein Arginine Methyltransferase 8 (PRMT8)

Arginine methylation is a widespread posttranslational modification mediated by arginine methyltransferases, such as PRMT8. Arginine methylation is involved in a number of cellular processes, including DNA repair, RNA transcription, signal transduction, protein compartmentalization, and possibly protein translation .The deduced PRMT8 protein contains 4 conserved methyltransferase motifs and an N-terminal myristoylation motif. PRMT8 shares more than 80% amino acid identity with PRMT1, although PRMT8 has 76 unique N-terminal amino acids. Northern blot analysis detected PRMT8 expression only in brain, which expressed a major transcript of 2.6 kb and minor transcripts of 2.2 and 2.9 kb. Database analysis suggested that PRMT8 may be expressed in other tissues.