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Updated: Jun 18, 2026

In Vitro Directed Evolution of a Restriction Endonuclease with More Stringent Specificity
Published on: March 25, 2020
Engineering Nt.BtsCI and Nb.BtsCI nicking enzymes and applications in generating long overhangs
Priscilla Hiu-Mei Too1, Zhenyu Zhu, Siu-Hong Chan
1New England Biolabs, Inc., 240 County Road, Ipswich, MA 01938, USA.
Abstract:
Type IIS restriction endonuclease BtsCI (GGATG 2/0) is a neoschizomer of FokI (GGATG 9/13) and cleaves closer to the recognition sequence. Although M.BtsCI shows 62% amino acid sequence identity to M.FokI, BtsCI and FokI restriction endonucleases do not share significant amino acid sequence similarity. BtsCI belongs to a group of Type IIS restriction endonucleases, BsmI, Mva1269I and BsrI, that carry two different catalytic sites in a single polypeptide. By inactivating one of the catalytic sites through mutagenesis, we have generated nicking variants of BtsCI that specifically nick the bottom-strand or the top-strand of the target site. By treating target DNA sequentially with the appropriate combinations of FokI and BtsCI nicking variants, we are able to generate long overhangs suitable for fluorescent labeling through end-filling or other techniques based on annealing of complementary DNA sequences.
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