A ZINC-FINGER GENE ZNF141 MAPPING AT 4P16.3 D4S90 IS A CANDIDATE GENEFOR THE WOLF-HIRSCHHORN (4P-) SYNDROME/

Chromosomal aneusomy is a major cause of reproductive wastage and cong enital malformations in man. Zinc finger encoding genes would be good candidates for being involved in the multiple developmental defects as sociated with chromosomal aneusomy-by virtue of their role as transcri ptional regulators, their abundancy in the genome and their known asso ciation with specific developmental disorders. We have isolated and ma pped a zinc finger encoding cDNA (ZNF141) of the C2-H-2/KRAB subfamily to the 4p - (Wolf - Hirschhorn) syndrome (WHS) chromosome region. ZNF 141 mapped to the distal end of the 2.2 Mb smallest region of deletion overlap of WHS, 300 kb from the 4p telomere on cosmid CD1 defining th e anonymous locus D4S90. ZNF141 was expressed ubiquitously at low leve ls in the analysed tissue. The identification of a candidate gene for a chromosomal aneusomy syndrome belonging to a class of evolutionary c onserved genes will provide options for studying its normal and abnorm al expression during mammalian embryogenesis.