Zinc Finger Protein 446 (ZNF446)

Kruppel-related zinc-finger proteins constitute the largest individual family of transcription factors in mammals ZNF446 contains a KRAB and three C2H2 zinc fingers. Northern blot analysis shows that ZNF446 is expressed in a variety of human adult tissues with the highest expression level in muscle. ZNF446 is a transcription repressor when fused to GAL4 DNA-binding domain and co-transfected with VP-16. Overexpression of ZNF446 in COS-7 cells inhibits the transcriptional activities of SRE and AP-1, in which the KRAB motif represents the basal transcriptional repressive activity, suggesting that the ZNF446 protein may act as a transcriptional repressor in mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling pathway to mediate cellular functions.