Chloride channel, calcium activated, family member 3, also known as CLCA3, is a protein

Protein

Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...

 which in humans is encoded by the CLCA3P pseudogene

Pseudogene

Pseudogenes are dysfunctional relatives of known genes that have lost their protein-coding ability or are otherwise no longer expressed in the cell...

. The protein

Protein

Proteins are biochemical compounds consisting of one or more polypeptides typically folded into a globular or fibrous form, facilitating a biological function. A polypeptide is a single linear polymer chain of amino acids bonded together by peptide bonds between the carboxyl and amino groups of...

 encoded by this gene is a chloride channel

Chloride channel

Chloride channels are a superfamily of poorly understood ion channels consisting of approximately 13 members.Chloride channels display a variety of important physiological and cellular roles that include regulation of pH, volume homeostasis, organic solute transport, cell migration, cell...

. This protein is not expressed in humans but is in certain other species such as mouse.

Function

This gene is a transcribed pseudogene belonging to the calcium sensitive chloride conductance protein family. To date, all members of this gene family map to the same site on chromosome 1p31-p22 and share high degrees of homology in size, sequence and predicted structure, but differ significantly in their tissue distributions. This gene contains several nonsense codons compared to other family members that render the transcript a candidate for nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD). Therefore, this gene is unlikely to be protein-coding. Protein structure prediction methods suggest the N-terminal region of CLCA3 protein is a zinc metalloprotease, and the protein is not an ion channel per se.