Ikaros is a member of the Kruppel family of zinc finger DNA-binding proteins. The Ikaros protein contains two separate regions of zinc-finger domains: 4 DNA-binding zinc fingers near the N-terminus and 2 zinc fingers for protein-protein interactions near the C-terminus. Here, we identified the Ikaros gene from 14 vertebrate genomes and found Ikaros existed in all kinds of vertebrate including fish, amphibians, birds and mammals. Moreover, except rat and Xenopus tropicalis Ikaros proteins, which lack the first C2H2-type 1 Zinc finger region, all identified Ikaros proteins contain six C2H2-type 1 Zinc finger regions. We found human Ikaros gene showed a predominant expression in the liver, lymph node, thymus, intestine, lung, mammary gland, bone marrow, brain, heart, placenta and prostate. Moreover, four available SNPs disrupted an existing exonic splicing enhancer were identified in Ikaros. Besides the reported acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the expression of Ikaros was related to the prognosis of 13 cases of cancers including blood cancers, breast, lung, ovarian and skin cancer. Moreover, the relationship between the expression of Ikaros and prognosis varied in different cancers, even in the same cancer from different database. Two tumor-related transcriptional factor (c-Fos and Elk-1) binding sites were identified within the 1.5-kb regions upstream of the transcriptional start site of human Ikaros, which may be involved in the effect of Ikaros in tumors.

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