Targeted RNA fingerprinting: the cloning of differentially-expressed cDNA fragments enriched for members of the zinc finger gene family.

We have developed and applied a modification of an 'RNA Fingerprinting' protocol previously published by Welsh and McClelland (Nucleic Acids Research 19: 5275-5279 1991) such that cDNA fragments which are both differentially-expressed and enriched for members of a specific gene family can readily be identified. cDNA fragments were amplified with an arbitrary primer initially used in the reverse transcription reaction in combination with a member of a primer set which corresponded to a conserved region within a specific gene family. This technique was used to isolate cDNAs encoding a recently described protein kinase as well as an unknown gene that contained a zinc finger. Several other known genes that contained a zinc finger domain and that were differentially-expressed were also isolated.