The zinc finger proteins are the single largest class of transcription factors in human genome. Previous studies revealed that zinc finger proteins are involved in transcriptional activation and regulation of apoptosis, etc. Alternative splicing emerges as a major mechanism of generating protein diversity and many zinc finger proteins reported have isoforms. In this article, we identify and characterize five isoforms of a novel zinc finger gene named ZNF415; these five isoforms were named ZNF415-1 to ZNF415-5. The five isoforms display different subcellular localization and are expressed at different levels in both embryonic and adult tissues. Furthermore, the splicing variants of ZNF415 display different transcriptional activity. Except for ZNF415-1, overexpression of the other ZNF415 isoforms in COS-7 cells inhibits the transcriptional activities of AP-1 and p53, suggesting that the ZNF415 protein may be involved in AP-1 and p53-mediated transcriptional activity. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.