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The 18 residues CCHC zinc finger is mainly found in the nucleocapsid protein of retrovirus. It is required for viral genome packaging and for early infection process [1,2]. It is also found in eukaryotic proteins involved in RNA binding or single-stranded DNA binding.

Some proteins known to contain a CCHC zinc finger are listed below.

• Retroviral GAG protein. Nucleocapside protein.
• Human CNBP protein. CNBP is involved in sterol-mediated repression. It has also been shown to bind the 5' untranslated region of ribosomal proteins mRNA (a region known to be important in translational regulation).
• Yeast BYR3; the CNBP homolog.
• Caenorhabditis elegans protein glh-1; a probable ATP-binding RNA helicase.
• Leishmania major hexamer-binding protein (HEXP). It binds the 5' untranslated region of the GP63 gene.
• Tobbacco transposon TNT1 PolX protein. Retrovirus-related pol polyprotein.

The profile we developed covers the whole domain.

January 2002 / First entry.

PROSITE method (with tools and information) covered by this documentation:

ZF_CCHC, PS50158; Zinc finger CCHC-type profile  (MATRIX)

Sequences known to belong to this class detected by the profile: ALL Other sequence(s) detected in Swiss-Prot: NONE

• Domain architecture view of Swiss-Prot proteins matching PS50158 • Retrieve an alignment of Swiss-Prot true positive hits:   Clustal format, color, condensed view  / Clustal format, color  / Clustal format, plain text  / Fasta format • Retrieve the sequence logo from the alignment • Taxonomic tree view of all Swiss-Prot/TrEMBL entries matching PS50158 • Retrieve a list of all Swiss-Prot/TrEMBL entries matching PS50158 • Scan Swiss-Prot/TrEMBL entries against PS50158 • view ligand binding statistics

Matching PDB structures: 1A6B 1AAF 1DSQ 1ESK ... [ALL]

1	Authors	Katz R.A., Jentoft J.E.
	Title	What is the role of the cys-his motif in retroviral nucleocapsid (NC) proteins?
	Source	BioEssays 11:176-181(1989).
	PubMed ID	2695083

2	Authors	Urbaneja M.A., Kane B.P., Johnson D.G., Gorelick R.J., Henderson L.E., Casas-Finet J.R.
	Title	Binding properties of the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 nucleocapsid protein p7 to a model RNA: elucidation of the structural determinants for function.
	Source	J. Mol. Biol. 287:59-75(1999).
	PubMed ID	10074407

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