Tailor-Made Cutting Proteins for DNA Engineering

We all know the standard restriction enzymes that have been used for years to specifically cut sequences of double-stranded DNA but now there's a new contender on the block. A team of researchers at Iowa State University have developed a hybrid protein that can target a specific sequence of DNA and then cut the double strand. This could lead to a new class of tools for use by molecular biologists everywhere and stop the reliance on the discovery of natural bacterial enzymes that currently do this job.

Bing Yang, assistant professor of genetics, development and cell biology, and his colleagues accomplished this by fusing a DNA recognition protein called a TAL effector to a DNA nuclease that, in free solution, randomly cuts double stranded DNA. The hybrid protein created has been found to specifically target sequences on DNA and cut them.

Yang says that his hybrid proteins can be constructed to locate specific segments of the DNA in any type of organism.

"This breakthrough could eventually make it possible to efficiently modify plant, animal and even human genomes," said Yang. "It should be effective in a range of organisms."

The technique will expand the library of tools available to molecular biologists and, once the recognition half of the protein has been understood and can be altered, will lead to enzymes that can be designed to target specific regions of DNA, allowing insertion or deletion of sequences at very specific points. It should make the design of plasmid vectors and the insertion of coding DNA less reliant on the 6 base pair sequences that are often the stumbing block in these experiments.

Full text from Science Daily and source can be found here.