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Updated: Aug 21, 2026

Direct Protein Delivery to Mammalian Cells Using Cell-permeable Cys2-His2 Zinc-finger Domains
Published on: March 25, 2015
Molecular properties of Zic4 and Zic5 proteins: functional diversity within Zic family
Akira Ishiguro1, Takashi Inoue, Katuhiko Mikoshiba
1Laboratory for Comparative Neurogenesis, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Wako-shi, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.
Abstract:
The Zic-family proteins control various developmental processes. Previous studies have shown that Zic1, Zic2, and Zic3 can act as transcriptional regulators, and that their functions are repressed by I-mfa, which has been identified as a repressor for basic helix-loop-helix-type transcriptional factors. Here, we investigated the molecular properties of the Zic4 and Zic5 proteins. Zic4/Zic5 showed DNA-binding activity to the Gli-binding sequence, similar to Zic1/Zic2/Zic3 proteins. However, Zic4/Zic5 did not exhibit any significant transcriptional activation ability nor they bind to I-mfa differently from Zic1/Zic2/Zic3. The nuclear localization of Zic4/Zic5 was not affected by the presence of the I-mfa protein, whereas the Zic1/Zic2/Zic3 proteins were translocated to the cytoplasmic compartment in the presence of I-mfa. The difference may be attributable to the dissimilarity of the N-terminal region between the Zic1/Zic2/Zic3 and Zic4/Zic5 proteins, since the binding of the Zic1/Zic2/Zic3 proteins to I-mfa occurs through their N-terminal regions.
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