Zinc Finger Protein 284 (ZNF284)

ZNF284 belongs to the krueppel C2H2-type zinc-finger protein family. Expressed in lung, liver, pancreas and thymus. Lower expression in heart, placenta, spleen, prostate, ovary, small intestine and colon. No expression seen in brain, skeletal muscle, kidney, testis and peripheral blood leukocyte. ZNF genes encoding Krüppel-associated box (KRAB) motifs are especially prone to this type of tandem organization. Differences in expression patterns and sequence divergence within the DNA binding regions of predicted proteins suggest that the duplicated genes have acquired novel functions over evolutionary time. Since KRAB-ZNF proteins are predicted to function as transcriptional regulators, the elaboration of new lineage-specific genes in this and other clustered ZNF families is likely to have had a significant impact on species-specific aspects of biology.