OPEN (Oligomerized Pool ENgineering) of Zinc Finger Nucleases

The Zinc Finger Consortium has described a robust and publicly available method for engineering zinc finger nucleases that function efficiently and exhibit low toxicities in human and plant cells. In a direct comparison with the modular assembly method, OPEN was shown to be more efficient at generating ZFNs for various target sites. Details of the reagents and methods are described in Maeder et al., Mol Cell 2008 (see Publications). The paper is available online at http://www.molecule.org.

Standardized Reagents and Protocols for Engineering Zinc Finger Nucleases by Modular Assembly

The Zinc Finger Consortium has published a paper in the journal Nature Protocols describing a set of reagents and detailed protocols for creating zinc finger domains by modular assembly (Wright et al., 2006 -- see Publications) and a follow-up paper in the journal Nature Methods describing a large-scale survey of the efficacy of these reagents for making three-finger ZFNs (Ramirez et al., 2008 -- see Publications). These papers are available online at http://www.nature.com.