Screening strategies for TALEN-mediated gene disruption

Abstract

Targeted gene disruption has rapidly become the tool of choice for the analysis of gene and protein function in routinely cultured mammalian cells. Three main technologies capable of irreversibly disrupting geneexpression exist: zinc-finger nucleases, transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), and the CRISPR/Cas9 system. The desired outcome of the use of any of these technologies is targeted insertions and/or deletions (indels) that result in either a nonsense frame shift or splicing error that disrupts protein expression. Many excellent do-it-yourself systems for TALEN construct assembly are now available at low or no cost to academic researchers. However, for new users, scre..