Characterization of a novel zinc finger gene (ZNF165) mapping to 6p21 that is expressed specifically in testis.

Clone ZF388 was identified during the course of expressed sequence tag analysis of human adult testis cDNAs as being a member of the C2H2 zinc finger gene family. Northern blot analysis of a range of 16 different human tissues has shown that clone ZF388 detects a single 2.2-kb transcript and that the expression of this mRNA species is strictly specific to the testis. Sequence analysis of ZF388 and other clones isolated by rescreening a testis cDNA library has defined a transcript with an extensive N-terminal acidic domain containing 17% aspartic and glutamic acid residues and a C-terminal domain composed of five zinc finger motifs linked through the highly conserved sequence TGE-KPYE. This gene has been designated ZNF165. Analysis of somatic cell hybrids containing single human chromosomes shows that ZNF165 maps to chromosome 6. Fluorescence in situ hybridization of cDNA insert probes to male metaphase spreads shows that the ZNF165 transcript maps to 6p21 close to the human MHC region. Human 6p21 is homologous with the distal inversion of the mouse t-complex, which has been shown to contain a cluster of genes expressed specifically in the testis.