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TALENs and ZFNs are associated with different mutation signatures

Nature Methods volume 10, page 185 (2013)Cite this article

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Zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) and transcription activator–like effector nucleases (TALENs) are of great interest for genome engineering in higher eukaryotic cells and organisms1,2,3,4,5. These enzymes contain the same FokI nuclease domain and induce site-specific DNA cleavage; the repair of this broken DNA via error-prone nonhomologous end joining gives rise to small insertions and deletions at the cleavage site, often disrupting genetic information. We have observed that, despite their similarities, ZFNs and TALENs are associated with different mutation patterns. We first compared ZFN and TALEN mutation signatures reported in the literature. We calculated the frequencies of insertions, deletions and complex patterns that include both insertions and deletions at target sites in mammalian cells, mammalian and nonmammalian organisms, and plants. Our analysis included a total of 1,456 mutant sequences at 122 target sites reported in 43 independent studies (Supplementary Table 1).

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Figure 1: Comparison of ZFN and TALEN mutation signatures.

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Acknowledgements

J.-S.K. is supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (2012-0001225). We thank D. Carroll for helpful discussion.

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Author notes

  1. Yongsub Kim and Jiyeon Kweon: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Creative Research Initiatives Center for Genome Engineering, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea

    Yongsub Kim, Jiyeon Kweon & Jin-Soo Kim

  2. Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University, Seoul, South Korea

    Yongsub Kim, Jiyeon Kweon & Jin-Soo Kim

Authors
  1. Yongsub Kim
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  2. Jiyeon Kweon
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  3. Jin-Soo Kim
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jin-Soo Kim.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

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Supplementary Figure 1 and Supplementary Table 1 (PDF 547 kb)

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Kim, Y., Kweon, J. & Kim, JS. TALENs and ZFNs are associated with different mutation signatures. Nat Methods 10, 185 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmeth.2364

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