A novel profile of expressed sequence tags for zinc finger encoding genes from the poorly differentiated exocrine...

Genes encoding for C2H2 zinc finger proteins are known to regulate normal cell proliferation and differentiation and have often been found to be mutated in different forms of cancer. We are interested in understanding the role of these genes as regulators of cell proliferation and differentiation in the exocrine pancreas. Therefore, we have generated expressed sequence tags (ESTs) encoding pancreas-enriched zinc finger peptides using the polymerase chain reaction and hybridization techniques [Adams, M.D. et al. (1991) Science, 252, 1651-1656]. Here we report the primary structure and expression pattern of 18 different zinc finger-encoding cDNAs (DZF-1-18) from the azaserine-derived tumoral cell line AR4IP which displays a poorly differentiated phenotype. Sequence analysis shows that all of these clones encode peptides which share the consensus DNA-binding motif with the Drosophila zinc finger transcription factor krüppel. High stringency Northern blot analysis shows that eight different zinc finger transcripts are expressed at high levels in normal adult rat pancreas and therefore constitute good candidates to play a role as transcription factors in exocrine pancreatic cells.