Functional Conversion and Artificial Repressor of Zinc Finger Proteins

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

DNA recognition is a very important phenomenon in biology and chemistry, and the molecular basis of the sequence-specific DNA binding is the subject of investigations aimed at the rational design of artificial repressors. Zinc finger libraries with different DNA-binding specificites based on a one-finger-three-nuclestide code have been developed successfully. Newly designed zinc finger protein containing nine Cys_2His_2 type motifs were manipulated, and the DNA binding property of this multi finger protein was compared with that of nation three zinc finger protein Sp1. Evidently, the footprinting analysis demonstrated that the nine finger protein binds at least 27 contiguous base pairs of DNA sequence. Six zinc finger proteins induced sequence-specific DNA bending were also designed and a bent in the DNA was determined by electrophoretic methods. Such multi zinc finger protein may be useful as genome-specific transcriptional swiches in future.