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The electronic form of this document may be cited in the following style:
Human Genome Program, U.S. Department of Energy, DOE Human Genome Program Contractor-Grantee Workshop IV, 1994.

Abstracts scanned from text submitted for November 1994 DOE Human Genome Program Contractor-Grantee Workshop. Inaccuracies have not been corrected.

Distribution and Organization of Zinc Finger Genes on Chromosome 19

Susan M. G. Hoffman, Chris Amemiya, and Harvey W. Mohrenweiser
Human Genome Center, L-452, Biology and Biotechnology Research Program, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550

Characterized genes containing zinc finger motifs are known to encode transcriptional regulators, and are of critical importance in developmental processes. It has been suggested that at least 100 of these genes, or 10-20% of the 300-700 ZNF loci the human genome is estimated to contain, are located on chromosome 19. Since typical ZNF loci contain large introns and cover 30-40 kb of genomic sequence, 5-10% of the 60 megabase chromosome l9 is expected to consist of these genes. A conserved probe from the H-C link between zinc fingers was used to screen an ~10X cosmid library of chromosome l9, and hybridized to more than 1000 cosmids. These cosmids were assembled into contigs and localized cytogenetically by FISH mapping. The ZNF genes are clustered physically, probably reflecting their proliferation via tandem duplications; currently, six major clusters of ZNF genes are known on chromosome l9, in p13.3, p13.2, p12, q13.1, q13.2, and q13.4.

At least 40-50 closely related ZNF loci of the KRAB family are clustered on 19p12. Most of this ZNF gene group falls within a four-megabase region of continuous clonal coverage we have assembled; these four megabases span two-thirds of the cytogenetic p12 band. About half of these loci are very similar to ZNF 91, which maps near the centromere in p12. This cluster of ZNF genes overlaps with several oncogenes at the p12-p13.1 boundary; otherwise, only ZNF genes have been localized to p12.

Another family of highly related ZNF genes, the ZNF 58 group, is located on p13.2, where at least six "58-like" loci are spaced along a contig of ~260 kb. A third group, the cluster on q13.4, contains MZF-l, an important regulator of hematopoietic development, plus at least one other ZNF gene of related function.

This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract no. W-7405-ENG-48.