CAVIN3 (Caveolae-associated protein 3)

CAVIN3 is a 27.7 kDa regulatory protein that controls caveolae trafficking and budding from the cell surface (UniProt: Q969G5). It promotes the release of caveolae from the plasma membrane and is required for caveola formation in smooth muscle, though not uniformly across tissues. Beyond vesicular dynamics, CAVIN3 modulates circadian clock function by regulating the period and phase of core clock components including PER1/2 and CRY1/2.

CAVIN3 has no annotated disease associations in the UniProt record, but proteomic evidence links it to Alzheimer's Disease pathology. In human post-mortem AD brain tissue compared to age-matched controls, CAVIN3 was significantly upregulated (mean log2 fold-change = 0.629) across two subcellular fractions in a TMT-labeled, data-dependent proteomics experiment (Chaparral AD proteomics). This elevation may reflect altered membrane trafficking or circadian dysregulation accompanying neurodegeneration in AD.