Zinc finger protein

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A zinc finger protein is a DNA-binding protein domain comprised of zinc fingers ranging from two in the Drosophila regulator ADR1, the more common three in mammalian Sp1 up to nine in [TFIIIA|TF_IIIA]. They occur in nature as the part of transcription factors conferring DNA sequence specificity as the DNA-binding domain.

They have also found use in protein engineering due to their modularity and have prospects as components of tools for use in therapeutic gene modulation (Gommans et. al., 2005) and zinc finger nucleases (Durai et. al., 2005).

[edit] References

• Durai S, Mani M, Kandavelou K, Wu J, Porteus M, Chandrasegaran S (2005). "Zinc finger nucleases: custom-designed molecular scissors for genome engineering of plant and mammalian cells". Nucleic Acids Res 33 (18): 5978-90. PMID 16251401. 
• Gommans, W. M., H. J. Haisma and M. G. Rots (2005). "Engineering zinc finger protein transcription factors: the therapeutic relevance of switching endogenous gene expression on or off at command." Journal of Molecular Biology 354(3): 507-19.

[edit] See also

• Zinc finger nuclease
• Zinc finger transcription factor
• Zinc finger
• DNA-binding domains