zinc fingers rule!
Jul. 11th, 2005 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormsewerWow. I wrote a review article on the engineering and design of zinc finger proteins a few years ago, and now they're starting to get press! Cool. I always thought the things they were doing with those things were really cool, with all kinds of amazing possible applications. I wondered why they never seemed to show up in the news. But now they are! Yay zinc fingers!
Zinc fingers, by the way, are a type of protein that binds to specific sequences of DNA. At the time I wrote my review paper they had gotten to the point where they could design a zinc finger protein that would bind tightly and specifically to any given DNA sequence of, say, 18 or fewer base pairs. Once you have a protein that will bind tightly to only one specific region of the genome, you can attach other things to it, things that cut or methylate DNA, or turn genes on and off, or any number of things. It's a very powerful technique with all kinds of possibilities. When I wrote the paper the main challenge was how to deliver engineered zinc fingers into the nucleus of living cells. But I guess they've solved that problem now. Cool!
Zinc fingers, by the way, are a type of protein that binds to specific sequences of DNA. At the time I wrote my review paper they had gotten to the point where they could design a zinc finger protein that would bind tightly and specifically to any given DNA sequence of, say, 18 or fewer base pairs. Once you have a protein that will bind tightly to only one specific region of the genome, you can attach other things to it, things that cut or methylate DNA, or turn genes on and off, or any number of things. It's a very powerful technique with all kinds of possibilities. When I wrote the paper the main challenge was how to deliver engineered zinc fingers into the nucleus of living cells. But I guess they've solved that problem now. Cool!
