A ZINC-FINGER GENE ZNF141 MAPPING AT 4P16.3/D4S90 IS A CANDIDATE GENE FOR THE WOLF-HIRSCHHORN (4P-) SYNDROME

Chromosomal aneusomy is a major cause of reproductive wastage and congenital malformations in man. Zinc finger encoding genes would be good candidates for being involved in the multiple developmental defects associated with chromosomal aneusomy-by virtue of their role as transcriptional regulators, their abundancy in the genome and their known association with specific developmental disorders. We have isolated and mapped a zinc finger encoding cDNA (ZNF141) of the C2-H-2/KRAB subfamily to the 4p - (Wolf - Hirschhorn) syndrome (WHS) chromosome region. ZNF141 mapped to the distal end of the 2.2 Mb smallest region of deletion overlap of WHS, 300 kb from the 4p telomere on cosmid CD1 defining the anonymous locus D4S90. ZNF141 was expressed ubiquitously at low levels in the analysed tissue. The identification of a candidate gene for a chromosomal aneusomy syndrome belonging to a class of evolutionary conserved genes will provide options for studying its normal and abnormal expression during mammalian embryogenesis.