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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2013 Oct 21.
Published in final edited form as: Drugs Future. 2012 Mar 1;37(3):183–196. doi: 10.1358/dof.2012.037.03.1779022

Fig. 1. The components and mechanisms of Zinc Finger Nuclease (ZFN).

Fig. 1

ZFN is composed of a three-finger binding domain and a FokI nuclease cleavage domain that are connected by a linker. Each finger binds to three base pairs. Site-specific double strand break (DSB) can be induced by ZFN at endogenous loci. The repair process leads to small gene deletions or insertions in non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) pathway. Corrected-gene or transgene (one or multiple) can be integrated into the mutant gene by an alternative mechanism, homology-directed repair (HDR), while co-expressing ZFN and donor DNA.