Artificial transcription factor
Artificial transcription factors (ATFs) are engineered individual or multi molecule transcription factors that either activate or repress gene transcription.[1]
ATFs often contain two main components linked together, a DNA-binding domain and a regulatory domain, also known as an effector domain or modulatory domain.[1] The DNA-binding domain targets a specific DNA sequence with high affinity, and the regulatory domain is responsible for activating or repressing the bound gene.[1] The ATF can modify the DNA structure directly, recruit proteins to compact or loosen the DNA wrapping around histones, which inhibits or allows RNA polymerase from binding and transcribing the DNA, or affect other transcription factors.[1][2] Because ATFs are composed of two separable components, the DNA-binding domain and the regulatory domain, the two domains are interchangeable permitting the design of new ATFs from existing natural transcription factors.[1]
It is also possible to downregulate expression of a gene by targeting the 5' untranslated region with a DNA-binding domain that lacks a regulatory domain; this will reduce transcription simply by blocking RNA polymerase progression along the DNA template.
A library of ATFs has been created and used to induce pluripotency in mouse embryonic fibroblasts.[3]
ATF Design
DNA-Binding Domain
Regulatory Domain
Linkers
ATF DNA-Binding Domain
CRISPR-Cas
TALEs
Zinc Fingers
ATF Applications
Reprogramming Cell State
Angelman Syndrome
See also
- Chimera (protein)
- Protein engineering
- Therapeutic gene modulation
- Zinc finger
- Zinc finger protein transcription factor
References
- ^ a b c d e Ansari, Aseem Z; Mapp, Anna K (2002-12-01). "Modular design of artificial transcription factors". Current Opinion in Chemical Biology. 6 (6): 765–772. doi:10.1016/S1367-5931(02)00377-0. ISSN 1367-5931.
- ^ Heiderscheit, Evan A.; Eguchi, Asuka; Spurgat, Mackenzie C.; Ansari, Aseem Z. (2018). "Reprogramming cell fate with artificial transcription factors". FEBS Letters. 592 (6): 888–900. doi:10.1002/1873-3468.12993. ISSN 1873-3468. PMC 5869137. PMID 29389011.
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: CS1 maint: PMC format (link) - ^ Eguchi, Asuka; Wleklinski, Matthew J.; et al. (2016). "Reprogramming cell fate with a genome-scale library of artificial transcription factors". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 113 (51): E8257 – E8266. doi:10.1073/pnas.1611142114. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 5187731. PMID 27930301.