MegaTALs: a Rare-cleaving Nuclease Architecture for Therapeutic Genome Engineering

Overview

Journal Nucleic Acids Res

Publisher Oxford University Press

Specialty Biochemistry

Date 2013 Nov 29

PMID 24285304

Citations 80

Authors

Sandrine Boissel

Jordan Jarjour

Alexander Astrakhan

Andrew Adey

Agnes Gouble

Philippe Duchateau

Jay Shendure

Barry L Stoddard

Michael T Certo

David Baker

Andrew M Scharenberg

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Rare-cleaving endonucleases have emerged as important tools for making targeted genome modifications. While multiple platforms are now available to generate reagents for research applications, each existing platform has significant limitations in one or more of three key properties necessary for therapeutic application: efficiency of cleavage at the desired target site, specificity of cleavage (i.e. rate of cleavage at 'off-target' sites), and efficient/facile means for delivery to desired target cells. Here, we describe the development of a single-chain rare-cleaving nuclease architecture, which we designate 'megaTAL', in which the DNA binding region of a transcription activator-like (TAL) effector is used to 'address' a site-specific meganuclease adjacent to a single desired genomic target site. This architecture allows the generation of extremely active and hyper-specific compact nucleases that are compatible with all current viral and nonviral cell delivery methods.

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