Cys₂His₂ zinc fingers (“zinc fingers”) define the most common transcription factor family in organisms ranging from yeast to humans. “Designer” zinc finger proteins with purposefully re-engineered DNA-binding specificities provide a powerful and broadly applicable technology for targeting functional domains to essentially ANY gene of interest in virtually ANY cell type. Zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) are an extremely powerful tool for performing targeted genomic manipulation in a variety of cell types including plants, insects, and humans. ZFNs consist of an engineered DNA-binding zinc finger domain linked to a non-specific endonuclease domain and can introduce double-stranded breaks (DSBs) that stimulate both homologous and non-homologous recombination, processes that can be harnessed to perform genomic manipulation. The capability to alter any genomic locus of interest will have tremendous potential in both research and gene therapy applications. However, the general application of this enormously promising technology depends critically on the ability to design zinc finger domains targeted to any genomic locus of interest.

The Zinc Finger (ZF) Consortium was established to ensure and to promote continued research and development of engineered zinc finger technology. The Consortium is committed to developing a zinc finger engineering platform that is robust, user-friendly, and freely available to the academic scientific community. Additional goals include developing improvements to zinc finger and ZFN engineering and to explore applications of engineered zinc finger domains. To achieve its goals, the Consortium has assembled an international group of scientists who each bring significant and complementary resources and expertise.