Sets of cDNA clones corresponding to genes with different expression specificity, 'brain-specific', 'common', 'liver-specific', were identified by differential hybridization of a human fetal brain cDNA library with total cDNA probes of human fetal brain and human fetal liver. Nucleotide sequence analysis revealed that one of the 'common' clones contained the cDNA encoding subunit C of human CCAAT-binding transcription factor. The isolated human CBF-C cDNA is 1977 nt long and consists of the full-length 3'-untranslated region (781 nt) with a poly (A) tail at the 3' end 185 nucleotides of 5'-untranslated region and the open reading frame (1011 nt), encoding a 337-aa protein with 91.7% homology with the translated region of rat CBF-C cDNA.