Identification of a novel zinc finger protein gene (ZNF298) in the GAP2 of human chromosome 21q

We have isolated a novel zinc finger protein gene, designated ZNF298, as a candidate gene for a particular phenotype of Down syndrome or bipolar affective disorder (BPAD) which maps to human chromosome 21q22.3. ZNF298 gene consists of 25 exons spanning approximately 80 kb in a direction from the telomere to centromere. There are four kinds of transcripts that harbor three types of 3′ UTR. These four transcripts (ZNF298a, ZNF298b, ZNF298c, and ZNF298d) contain putative open reading frames encoding 1178, 1198, 555, and 515 amino acids, respectively. ZNF298 gene was ubiquitously expressed in various tissues at very low level. The protein motif analysis revealed that ZNF298 proteins contain a SET [Su(var)3-9, Enhancer-of-zeste, Trithorax] domain, multiple C2H2-type zinc finger (ZnF_C2H2) domains, several nuclear localization signals (NLSs), and PEST sequences. Nuclear localization of ZNF298 protein was confirmed by transfection of expression vector of GFP-tagged protein into two human cell lines. Interestingly, this gene crosses over a clone gap (GAP2) remaining in the band 21q22.3. We obtained the DNA fragments corresponding to GAP2 using ZNF298 cDNA sequence as anchor primers for PCR and determined its genomic DNA sequence.