Figure - PMC

Skip to main content

An official website of the United States government

Here's how you know

Here's how you know

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

View full-text article in PMC

. 2016 Oct 14;48(10):e265. doi: 10.1038/emm.2016.111

Search in PMC
Search in PubMed
View in NLM Catalog
Add to search

Copyright © 2016 KSBMB.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

PMC Copyright notice

Different molecular scissors platforms including zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs), transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) and clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats/CRISPR-associated-9 (CRISPR/Cas9). (a) ZFNs are hybrid proteins between zinc-finger arrays and the catalytic domain of FokI endonuclease. Each ZF array is capable of binding to three nucleotides in the target sequence. Dimerization of the FokI catalytic domain leads to the formation of double-strand breaks (DSBs). (b) TALENs possess a modular central repeat domain that can be engineered to bind any user-selected sequence. Engineering of the sequences and order of RVDs can confer user-defined sequence specificities. TALENs are hybrid proteins between the TAL effector backbone and the catalytic domain of FokI endonuclease. TALENs require two monomers to bind to the sense and antisense strands, respectively. (c) The CRISPR/Cas9 two-component system is composed of Cas9 endonuclease and the single-guide RNA (sgRNA) molecule. Engineering of 20 nucleotides in the sgRNA can confer user-selected specificity. Cas9 nuclease domains cleave both strands within the target sequence preceding the protospacer-associated motif (PAM) NGG trinucleotide sequence.