Isolation and Characterization of a Novel Zinc Finger Gene, ZNF219, and Mapping to the Human Chromosome 14qll Region

We have isolated and characterized a novel zinc finger gene by screening a human testis cDNA library. The isolated cDNA, termed ZNF219, contains an open reading frame of 2169 nucleotides encoding 723 amino acids. Sequence analysis revealed 9 sets of Kruppel-related zinc finger structures and proline-rich regions in several parts. ZNF219 exhibited ubiquitous expression in all fetal and adult tissues examined. The transcript size was 5.5 kb in adult tissues, while the main transcript size in the embryo stage was 3.5 kb. The transcript size is developmentally regulated. When the plasmid cloned with green fluorescent protein (GFP)-tagged ZNF219\vas expressed in HeLa and COS7 cells, strong fluorescence intensities were observed only in the nucleus of both cells by fluorescence confocal microscopy. These data suggest that ZNF219 may be related to the regulation of transcription and developmental regulation. Genomic structure analysis mapped ZNF219 to chromosome 14qll between markers D14S72 and D14S990, because a sequence tagged site mapped to the locus was found in the intron region of the ZNF219 gene. Key words: ZNF219; zinc finger protein 219; human chromosome 14qll Zinc finger proteins comprise an important class of Not I-linking cosmid clones4 mapped to the human chro-eukaryotic DNA binding proteins and contain an evo- mosome Xq28 region by direct cDNA selection.5 Whe