General Comment |
Yan W, et al 2002 reported the identification of Zfp393, a germ cell-specific gene encoding a novel
zinc finger protein.
Using the digital differential display program of the National Center for
Biotechnology Information, the authors identified a contig of expression sequence tags (ESTs)
which were unique to ovary, testis, and egg libraries. The full-length cDNA of this
transcript was deduced and further confirmed by reverse transcriptase polymerase
chain reaction (RT-PCR). The cDNA encodes a novel protein of 341 amino acids
with a nuclear localization signal. The carboxyl-terminus of the protein contains three
C2H2 zinc fingers, and the NH(2)-terminus is proline and serine-rich. Based on the
conserved zinc finger motifs, the authors have termed this novel protein as zinc finger protein
393 (ZFP393). Northern blot and RT-PCR analyses revealed that Zfp393 mRNA was
exclusively expressed in testis and ovary. The expression sites were further localized
by in situ hybridization to step 3-8 spermatids in testis and growing oocytes in ovary.
The Zfp393 gene consists of three exons spanning approximately 8kb on the distal part
of mouse chromosome 4. The carboxyl-terminal zinc finger region is highly
homologous to several zinc finger-containing proteins, but no proteins were found to
share sequence similarity with the NH(2)-terminal region of ZFP393. Genomic
database mining and Southern blot analysis indicate that Zfp393 is a single copy gene.
|