A finger-like loop of peptides enclosing a bound zinc ion at one end, usually part of a larger protein molecule (esp. one regulating transcription).
[1985
The repeats are thought to be extended DNA-binding ‘fingers’ linked by flexible joints, each having a zinc ion centre.
EMBO Journalvol. 4 1613 (caption) ]
1987
A 30-amino acid peptide, which corresponds to the second ‘zinc finger’ domain of transcription factor IIIA, has been synthesized.
Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences U.S.A.vol. 84 4841
1988
Zinc fingers are postulated to bind selectively to control regions of the genomic DNA which is destined to transcribe 5S RNA.
BioFactorsvol. 1 34/2
Frequency
zinc finger typically occurs about 0.2 times per million words in modern written English.
zinc finger is in frequency band 4, which contains words occurring between 0.1 and 1 times per million words in modern written English. More about OED's frequency bands
Frequency data is computed programmatically, and should be regarded as an estimate.
Frequency of zinc finger, n., 1980–2010
* Occurrences per million words in written English
Historical frequency series are derived from Google Books Ngrams (version 2), a data set based on the Google Books corpus of several million books printed in English between 1500 and 2010.
The overall frequency for a given word is calculated by summing frequencies for the main form of the word, any plural or inflected forms, and any major spelling variations.
For sets of homographs (distinct entries that share the same word-form, e.g. mole, n.¹, mole, n.², mole, n.³, etc.), we have estimated the frequency of each homograph entry as a fraction of the total Ngrams frequency for the word-form. This may result in inaccuracies.
Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the Google Books corpus.
Decade
Frequency per million words
1980
0.15
1990
0.18
2000
0.18
2010
0.23
Frequency of zinc finger, n., 2017–2024
* Occurrences per million words in written English
Modern frequency series are derived from a corpus of 20 billion words, covering the period from 2017 to the present. The corpus is mainly compiled from online news sources, and covers all major varieties of World English.
Smoothing has been applied to series for lower-frequency words, using a moving-average algorithm. This reduces short-term fluctuations, which may be produced by variability in the content of the corpus.
Period
Frequency per million words
2017
0.038
2018
0.043
2019
0.051
2020
0.058
2021
0.069
2022
0.08
2023
0.085
2024
0.087
Originally published as part of the entry for zinc, n.
zinc, n. was first published in 1921; not fully revised.