Era G Protein Like Protein 1 (ERAL1)

Era is an essential GTPase that is required for proper cell cycle progression and cell division in E. coli. By EST database searching with the C terminus of E. coli Era as query, Britton et al. (2000) isolated several homologous human ESTs. By sequencing of the ESTs, they identified 2 splice variants of the human ERAL1 gene, which they designated ERAL1A and ERAL1B. ERAL1A encodes a deduced 443-amino acid protein with all of the domains of the bacterial Era protein: an N-terminal GTP-binding domain, a conserved BoxA sequence, and a C-terminal KH domain. ERAL1B contains an in-frame stop codon that removes the C terminus of the protein, including BoxA and the putative KH domain, and results in a shortened protein of 282 amino acids. Northern blot analysis detected ubiquitous expression of an approximately 2.2-kb transcript.