Cloning and characterization of a novel human gene encoding a zinc finger protein with 25 fingers

This study reports cloning and characterization of a human cDNA encoding a novel human zinc finger protein, ZFD25. ZFD25 cDNA is 6118 bp long and has an open reading frame of 2352 bp that encodes a 783 amino acid protein with 25 C2H2-type zinc fingers. The ZFD25 cDNA also contains a region with high sequence similarity to the Krüppel-associated box A and B domain in the 5'-untranslated region, suggesting that ZFD25 belongs to the Krüppel-associated box zinc finger protein family. The ZFD25 gene was localized to chromosome 7q11.2. Northern blot analysis showed that ZFD25 was expressed in a wide range of human organs. In cultured endothelial cells, the mRNA level was decreased upon serum starvation.     

Cloning and characterization of a novel Krüppel-like zinc finger gene, ZNF268, expressed in early human embryo

With the aim of identifying genes involved in early human embryonic development, we have isolated a cDNA clone representing a novel human zinc finger gene ZNF268 from 3 week old human embryo cDNA library using a differential hybridization strategy. The complete cDNA sequence of ZNF268 contained an open reading frame of 2841 nucleotides that encodes a 947 amino acid protein with an N-terminal Krüppel-associated box (KRAB) domain and 24 C-terminal zinc fingers. Northern blot analysis showed that ZNF268 mRNA is mainly expressed in 3-5 week old human embryos suggesting it could play certain roles in the embryogenesis. The gene consists of six exons spanning about 22 kb of genomic DNA. According to the genomic sequence from the HTGS database, the ZNF268 gene is assigned to human chromosome 5.