April 22nd 2008 - Cellectis SA, the rational genome engineering company specializing in the production of meganuclease recombination systems and in meganuclease engineering, announced the publication of a new paper in the high-profile Nucleic Acids Research journal (Fajardo-Sanchez et al., Computer design of obligat heterodimer meganucleases allows efficient cutting of custom DNA sequences, Nucleic Acids Res. 2008, Feb. 14th [Epub ahead of print])...... In this study, researcher from CRG modified two engineered meganucleases from Cellectis’ collection, in order to improve their specificity. Most engineered meganucleases so far are heterodimers derived from the dimeric I-CreI protein. Heterodimer formation is obtained by coexpression of two monomers in the targeted cell, and is actually associated with the formation of two homodimers recognizing different targets. This results in a loss of specificity, which can be solved only by the suppression of homodimer formation. To address this problem, CRG researchers have modified the protein-protein interface of the two proteins in order to abolish homodimerisation. This design could in principle be applied to every and any heterodimer produced by Cellectis... [PDF] Cellectis' Press Release - PDF du Communiqué de Presse de Cellectis -
