Can pseudocomplementary peptide nucleic acid nucleases (pcPNANs) be a new tool for genetic engineering?

  Gansu Key Lab of Crop Improvement & Germplasm Enhancement, Gansu Provincial Key Laboratory of Aridland Crop Sciences, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou City, Gansu Province, China
DOI
10.7287/peerj.preprints.229v1
Published
Accepted
Subject Areas
Biotechnology, Genetics, Genomics
Keywords
genetic engineering, pseudocomplementary peptide nucleic acid nucleases, DNA double strand break, homologous recombination, error-prone nonhomologous end joining.
Copyright
© 2014 Shi
Licence
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
Cite this article
Shi P. 2014. Can pseudocomplementary peptide nucleic acid nucleases (pcPNANs) be a new tool for genetic engineering? PeerJ PrePrints 2:e229v1

Abstract

Zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) and transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) comprise a powerful class of tools that are redefining the boundaries of biological research. Although these technologies have begun to enable targeted genome modifications, there remains a need for new technologies that are scalable, affordable, and easy to engineer. In this paper, we propose a new tool for genetic engineering, the pseudocomplementary peptide nucleic acid nucleases (pcPNANs), which are composed of a pseudocomplementary PNA (pcPNA) specific for a DNA target sequence, a FokI nuclease cleavage domain and a nuclear localization signal. pcPNANs may induce targeted DNA double-strand breaks that activate DNA damage response pathways and enable custom alterations. Their cleavage-site is determined by simple Watson-Crick rule, and thus pcPNANs for aimed cleavage of genomes can be straightforwardly designed and synthesized without any selection procedure. Accordingly, the cleavage-site and site-specificity are freely chosen by changing the sequences and the lengths of pcPNA strands. We believe that the potentiality of pcPNAN as a new tool for genetic engineering will be confirmed in the future.