Studies of transcription-activation-like-effectors interacting with the epigenetic mark N6-methyl adenine

Abstract

The specific detection of epigenetic marks is required for diagnosis and subsequent treatment of numerous diseases which are based on a disorder of the DNA methylation pattern. In bacteria, the epigenetic signal N6-methyl adenine functions in many cellular processes like genome defense, DNA replication and repair as well as transcription of virulence factors. In the past decade, lots of effort went into the development of protein-DNA recognition systems. The present work is located at the interface of DNA-protein interaction studies and the influence of epigenetic signals. TALE proteins, similarly to CRISPR/CAS and Zinc finger proteins, are DNA binding proteins which are programmable and target user-defined DNA-sequences. In this work, these methylation sensitive TALE proteins are harnessed in order to illuminate the binding behavior to DNA harboring 6mA modifications.