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

With the aim of identifying genes involved in early human embryonic develop ment. 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 o pen reading frame of 2841 nucleotides that encodes a 947 amino acid protein with an N-terminal Kruppel-associated box (KRAB) domain and 24 C-terminal zinc fingers. Northern blot analysis showed that ZNF268 mRNA is mainly expr essed 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 o f genomic DNA. According to the genomic sequence from the HTGS database. th e ZNF268 gene is assigned to human chromosome 5. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.