In this study, we performed in vivo experiments to determine the function of human Elongator subunit Elp4 by using a yeast complementary system. Our results indicated that though human ELP4 was not able to complement the growth defects of the ELP4 deletion mutant strain to high concentration salt, it partially reduced the sensitivity of mutant strain to caffeine, high temperature and 6-AU. Gene expression analysis indicated that human ELP4 partially resumed the slow activation of the PHO5 gene caused by the deletion of yELP4 under the low phosphate concentration. Meanwhile, under the condition of heat shock treatment, hELP4 increased the expression level of SSA3 gene. All these data demonstrated that human ELP4 can partially complement the growth defects and restore the slow activation of certain genes of the yELP4 deletion strain. These results indicate that human Elp4 subunit has similar functions to that of the yeast.