Zinc finger protein 161 (ZFP161) belongs to the large Kruppel type ZFP family, contains five consecutive zinc fingers, and may be involved in development. Here, we present the novel cloning and characterization of the ZFP161 cDNA from Rattus norvegicus. The rat ZFP161 has an open reading frame of 1347 bp and encodes a ZFP of 449 amino acids with a predicted mass of 51 kDa. Sequence alignment shows that there is a high homology among the deduced amino acid sequences of the rat, mouse and human ZFP161 proteins. We determined that both the mouse and rat coding sequences are contained within a single exon, with the start codon (ATG) contained in a separate exon. RT-PCR revealed that the ZFP161 mRNA is expressed at high levels in rat spleen, brain, lung and kidney, and at much lower levels in muscle and heart.