Promising research...
Jun. 30th, 2005 06:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Article on the use of Zinc Finger proteins to regulate genes
For the past several years, Carlos Barbas, who, at 36, holds the Janet and Keith Kellogg II Chair in Molecular Biology, has been pursuing one line of research aimed at answering a simple—but important—question: can one design proteins to regulate the expression of any human gene?
With zinc fingers, a common structural element found in proteins, says Barbas, the answer is “yes.”
Barbas has found a set of these small zinc finger protein "motifs" that each specifically bind to a particular three base pair sequence of DNA—a codon. By stringing several of these zinc fingers together, he can create a multiple zinc finger protein that can bind any sequence of interest, including unique regulatory regions, and to which he can fuse repressor and activator proteins to specifically down- and up-regulate those genes.
For the past several years, Carlos Barbas, who, at 36, holds the Janet and Keith Kellogg II Chair in Molecular Biology, has been pursuing one line of research aimed at answering a simple—but important—question: can one design proteins to regulate the expression of any human gene?
With zinc fingers, a common structural element found in proteins, says Barbas, the answer is “yes.”
Barbas has found a set of these small zinc finger protein "motifs" that each specifically bind to a particular three base pair sequence of DNA—a codon. By stringing several of these zinc fingers together, he can create a multiple zinc finger protein that can bind any sequence of interest, including unique regulatory regions, and to which he can fuse repressor and activator proteins to specifically down- and up-regulate those genes.