ZAC encodes a zinc ®nger protein with antiproliferative activity, is maternally imprinted and is a candidate for the tumor suppressor gene on 6q24. ZAC expression is frequently lost in breast and ovary tumor-derived cell lines and down-regulated in breast primary tumors. In this report, we describe ZACD2, an alternatively spliced variant of ZAC lacking the sequence encoding the two N-terminal zinc ®ngers. Messenger RNAs encoding ZAC or ZACD2 were equally abundant and both proteins were nuclear. ZACD2 displayed an improved transactivation activity and an enhanced anity for a ZAC binding site, suggesting that the two N-terminal zinc ®ngers negatively regulated ZAC binding to its target DNA sequences. Both proteins were equally ecient in preventing colony formation, indicating similar overall antiproliferative activities. However, these activities resulted from a dierential regulation of apoptosis vs cell cycle progression since ZACD2 was more ecient at induction of cell cycle arrest than ZAC, whereas it was the reverse for apoptosis induction. Hence, these data further underline that ZAC gene is critically controlled, both at the transcriptional level through imprinting and at the functional level through alternative splicing.