April 29, 2009

ZFC paper demonstrates first modification of endogenous plant genes by ZFN-induced homologous recombination

A paper published online at Nature today describes the first use of zinc finger nucleases to stimulate homologous recombination at endogenous plant genes. The study, a joint effort by the labs of Consortium members Dan Voytas and Keith Joung, uses zinc finger nucleases to introduce amino acid sequence changes in a plant gene that confer herbicide resistance. The work was performed using Zinc Finger Consortium reagents for modular design and OPEN engineering of zinc finger arrays.

Targeted gene modification of plant genes has been a long-standing goal in plant biology, which is now realized through the use of zinc finger nucleases. This study opens up new opportunities to dissect plant gene function and develop new plants with valuable traits.

    October 2, 2008

ZFC Announces Addition of Two New Full Members

The ZFC is pleased to announce that Randall Peterson, Ph.D. of the Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and Éva Scheuring Vanamee, Ph.D. of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine have joined the Consortium as Full Members. Dr. Peterson has expertise in zebrafish technologies and chemical biology and will work with the Consortium to develop ZFN technology for use in zebrafish. Dr. Vanamee has extensive experience in studying the structure and function of restriction endonucleases and will work with the Consortium to study and further develop zinc finger nucleases.

    September 23, 2008

ZFC Member Labs Publish New Web-Based Zinc Finger Database (ZiFDB) in Nucleic Acids Research

The labs of Dan Voytas, Leslie Miller, Drena Dobbs, and Keith Joung have published a paper describing ZiFDB, a web-accessible resource that compiles information on individual zinc fingers and engineered zinc finger arrays. To enhance its utility, ZiFDB is linked to the output from ZiFiT, another pre-existing web-based software program that assists biologists in finding sites within target genes for engineering zinc-finger proteins. Links to ZiFDB and ZiFiT (both freely available without registration) can be found on the Zinc Finger Consortium Software Tools webpage. The paper is freely available online at nar.oxfordjournals.org.

    July 24, 2008

ZFC Publishes Robust and Publicly Available Method for Engineering Zinc Finger Nucleases in Molecular Cell

Member laboratories of the ZFC have published a new paper in the journal Molecular Cell entitled "Rapid 'Open-Source' Engineering of Customized Zinc-Finger Nucleases for Highly Efficient Gene Modification." This paper describes the development and validation of a robust and publicly available platform for engineering zinc finger arrays that function efficiently and possess minimal toxicity in human and plant cells. Led by first-author Morgan L. Maeder of the Joung lab, the groups used this new method (termed OPEN for Oligomerized Pool ENgineering) to generate multiple ZFN pairs for targets in three endogenous human genes and one endogenous plant gene. These ZFNs could be used to induce genomic modifications with high efficiencies. In addition, the study also demonstrates in a direct comparison that OPEN is more effective than the previously described modular assembly approach. The paper is available online at http://www.molecule.org and will be published in the July 25th, 2008 issue of Molecular Cell.

    April 29, 2008

ZFC Member Labs Publish Correspondence Evaluating the Efficacy of Modular Assembly for ZFN Construction in Nature Methods

The Joung, Voytas, and Cathomen labs have published a large-scale evaluation of the modular assembly method for constructing ZFNs in the journal Nature Methods. This Correspondence, entitled "Unexpected failure rates for modular assembly of engineered zinc-fingers," provides important guidance for researchers who are interested in using modular assembly to engineer ZFNs. The paper is available online at http://www.nature.com/nmeth.

    December 21, 2007

Addition of Linzhao Cheng, Ph.D. as a Full Member of the Zinc Finger Consortium

The Zinc Finger Consortium is pleased to announce that Linzhao Cheng, Ph.D. of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine has joined as a Full Member. Dr. Cheng brings his extensive expertise in the genetic manipulation of human stem cells to the on-going efforts of the Consortium.

    August 19, 2007

Addition of New Full Members to the Consortium

The Zinc Finger Consortium is very pleased to announce that Toni Cathomen, Ph.D. (Charité Medical School) and Amy Walker, Ph.D. (Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School) have become Full Members of the ZFC. The Cathomen and Walker labs join the five other Full Member labs in their joint efforts to establish a ZFC platform for engineering zinc fingers and zinc finger nucleases.

    November 16, 2006

ZFC paper describing zinc finger modular assembly methods published in Nature Protocols

The Zinc Finger Consortium has published its first paper entitled "Standardized Reagents and Protocols for Engineering Zinc Finger Nucleases by Modular Assembly" in the journal Nature Protocols. This paper describes reagents for creating zinc finger domains by modular assembly that are compatible with the unified Zinc Finger Consortium platform for constructing zinc finger nucleases.

The paper is available online at http://www.nature.com. All reagents described in this paper have been deposited with Addgene, a non-profit plasmid distribution service (http://www.addgene.org/zfc) and are available to researchers at academic/non-commercial institutions.

    September 12, 2006

Four investigators join the Zinc Finger Consortium

The Zinc Finger Consortium is pleased to announce that Paul B. McCray, Jr., M.D. (University of Iowa) and Drena Dobbs, Ph.D. (Iowa State University) have joined as Full Members. In addition, Jin-Soo Kim, Ph.D. (Seoul National University) and Amy K. Walker, Ph.D. (Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School) have joined as Associate Members. Additional information about these investigators and their areas of expertise can be found on the Consortium Members page.

    June 6, 2006

Two additional zinc finger researchers join the Zinc Finger Consortium

The Zinc Finger Consortium is pleased to announce that Dr. David J. Segal (University of California - Davis) and Dr. Scot A. Wolfe (University of Massachusetts Medical School) have agreed to join as Associate Members. Both Drs. Segal and Wolfe have extensive experience with the design and engineering zinc finger proteins.

    April 27, 2006

Three additional investigators join the Zinc Finger Consortium

Dana Carroll, Ph.D. (University of Utah), Toni Cathomen, Ph.D. (Charite Medical School, Germany), and Mark Isalan (EMBL-CRG Systems Biology Programme, Spain) have joined the Zinc Finger Consortium as Associate Members.

    December 23, 2005

ZFNs highlighted in News Focus article in Science magazine

Read about ZFNs (and the Zinc Finger Consortium) in the December 23, 2005 issue of Science