THE REARRANGED L-MYC FUSION GENE (RLF) ENCODES A ZN-15 RELATED ZINC-FINGER PROTEIN

We have previously characterized intrachromosomal rearrangements at 1p 32 fusing the first exon of the RLF gene with L-myc, Here we present t he full-length cDNA sequence of the 6251 bp RLH mRNA, The predicted 19 14 amino acid Rlf protein contains sixteen widely spaced zinc finger m otifs, and is related to the Zn-15 transcription factor, RLF is widely expressed in fetal and adult tissues, suggesting that it has a genera l role in transcriptional regulation. The zinc fingers are not contain ed in the 79 amino acid N-terminal region of RLP involved in the RLF-L -myc fusions, and the transforming ability of the RLF-L-myc and the no rmal L-myc proteins is indistinguishable. These findings suggest that the role of the rearrangements fusing RLF and L-myc is to the tightly controlled deregulate expression of the L-myc gene.