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Updated: Sep 27, 2026

Direct Protein Delivery to Mammalian Cells Using Cell-permeable Cys2-His2 Zinc-finger Domains
Published on: March 25, 2015
Human zinc fingers as building blocks in the construction of artificial transcription factors
Kwang-Hee Bae1, Young Do Kwon, Hyun-Chul Shin
1ToolGen Inc., 461-6 Jeonmin-Dong, Yusung-Gu, Daejeon, 305-390, South Korea.
Abstract:
We describe methods for generating artificial transcription factors capable of up- or downregulating the expression of genes whose promoter regions contain the target DNA sequences. To accomplish this, we screened zinc fingers derived from sequences in the human genome and isolated 56 zinc fingers with diverse DNA-binding specificities. We used these zinc fingers as modular building blocks in the construction of novel, sequence-specific DNA-binding proteins. Fusion of these zinc-finger proteins with either a transcriptional activation or repression domain yielded potent transcriptional activators or repressors, respectively. These results show that the human genome encodes zinc fingers with diverse DNA-binding specificities and that these domains can be used to design sequence-specific DNA-binding proteins and artificial transcription factors.
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