Zinc Finger Protein 136 (ZNF136)

Transcriptional regulatory proteins containing tandemly repeated zinc finger domains are thought to be involved in both normal and abnormal cellular proliferation and differentiation. One abundant class of such transcriptional regulators resembles the Drosophila Kruppel segmentation gene product due to the presence of repeated Cys2-His2 (C2H2) zinc finger domains that are connected by conserved sequences, called H/C links. The ZNF136 cDNA predicts a 540-amino acid Kruppel-type zinc finger protein containing an N-terminal KRAB domain.ZNF136 contains 14 zinc finger domains followed by a putative degenerate finger domain, and only the KRAB A box. the ZNF136 KRAB A box functions as a weak transcriptional repressor domain when fused to the yeast GAL4 DNA-binding domain. Northern blot analysis detected ZNF136 expression in all tissues examined.