Protein Modeling/Human Genome

The 2015 topic for Protein Modeling deals with editing the human genome. The pre-build model is of the catalytic domain of the endonuclease protein fokI.

See the CBM webpage for more details.

Endonuclease FokI
The 2015 Pre-Build Model should represent amino acids 421-560 of chain A of the restriction endonuclease protein fokI based on the PDB file 2FOK.pdb.

Restriction endonucleases are proteins that can cut DNA at a specific point in a specific sequence, allowing genome editing. The specific protein FokI, the focus of this year's event, occurs naturally in bacteria as a defense mechanism against invading viruses. This protein, like other restriction enzymes, has two domains (functional parts): the cleavage domain (nuclease) and the DNA-binding domain, composed of zinc fingers. In designing genome-editing restriction enzymes, the nuclease of the FokI is typically removed from its natural DNA binding domains and attached to new binding domains, to create a new specialized restriction enzyme. The pre-build model focuses solely on the nuclease. This nuclease functions solely as a dimer, meaning it requires two copies (one attached to each strand of DNA) in order to successfully cleave the DNA.