Isolation of a Novel Family of C2H2 Zinc Finger Proteins Implicated in Transcriptional Repression Mediated by Chicken Ovalbumin Upstream Promoter Transcription Factor (COUP-TF) Orphan Nuclear Receptors

Two novel and related C2H2 zinc finger proteins that are highly expressed in the brain, CTIP1 and CTIP2 (COUPTF-interacting proteins1 and 2, respectively), were isolated and shown to interact with all members of the chicken ovalbumin upstream promoter transcription factor (COUP-TF) subfamily of orphan nuclear receptors. The interaction of CTIP1 with ARP1 was studied in detail, and CTIP1 was found to harbor two independent ARP1 interaction domains, ID1 and ID2, whereas the putative AF-2 of ARP1 was required for interaction with CTIP1. CTIP1, which exhibited a punctate staining pattern within the nucleus of transfected cells, recruited cotransfected ARP1 to these foci and potentiated ARP1-mediated transcriptional repression of a reporter construct. However, transcriptional repression mediated by ARP1 acting through CTIP1 did not appear to involve recruitment of a trichostatin A-sensitive histone deacetylase(s) to the template, suggesting that this repression pathway may be distinct from that utilized by several other nuclear receptors.