Zinc Finger Protein 138 (ZNF138)

Transcriptional regulatory proteins containing tandemly repeated zinc finger domains are thought to be involved in both normal and abnormal cellular proliferation and differentiation. One abundant class of such transcriptional regulators resembles the Drosophila Kruppel segmentation gene product due to the presence of repeated Cys2-His2 (C2H2) zinc finger domains that are connected by conserved sequences, called H/C links. By screening a human insulinoma cDNA library with a degenerate oligonucleotide corresponding to the H/C linker sequence, Tommerup et al. (1993) isolated cDNAs potentially encoding zinc finger proteins. Tommerup and Vissing (1995) performed sequence analysis on a number of these cDNAs and identified several novel zinc finger protein genes, including ZNF138. The ZNF138 cDNA predicts a protein belonging to the Kruppel family of zinc finger proteins.