Yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) methods are powerful tools for detecting protein-protein interactions. The traditional Y2H method has been widely applied to screen novel protein interactions since it was established two decades ago. The high false-positive rate of the traditional method drove the development of modified Y2H systems. Here, we describe a novel Y2H system using zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs)...

Phenotypic information about several pig meat quality traits on 334 Large White × Meishan F2 pigs was collected. Effects of the association of the FokI variants in the seventh intron of the skeletal muscle glycogen synthase (GYS1) gene and the PstI variants in the ninth intron of the palmitoyl acyl-CoA oxidase 1 (ACOX1) gene on the meat quality traits were examined on all pigs. The FokI variant...

Variation in the phenotypic expression of Albright's hereditary osteodystrophy (AHO) determined by the parent of transmission, suggests that the human Gs alpha gene (GNAS1), in which mutations occur in AHO, may be under imprinted control. GNAS1 is also known to map to a chromosomal region (20q13.11) showing syntenic homology with the imprinted mouse region 2E1-2H3. To establish if GNAS1 is inde...

Viral DNA binding proteins that direct nucleases or other protein domains to viral DNA in lytically or latently infected cells may provide a novel approach to modulate viral gene expression or replication. Cervical carcinogenesis is initiated by high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) infection, and viral DNA persists in the cancer cells. To test whether a DNA binding domain of a papillomavirus pr...

BACKGROUND Polymorphisms in the gene that encodes the vitamin D receptor (VDR) may influence the host response to Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection. METHODS In a Peruvian community with a high incidence of tuberculosis (TB), VDR TaqI and FokI polymorphisms were compared among 103 patients with pulmonary TB and 206 matched healthy control subjects. Associations of VDR polymorphisms with tre...

Recently, the FokI polymorphism (rs2228570) in the vitamin D receptor gene (VDR) and conventional risk factors were associated with spine disorders in the Italian population, but without gender analysis. Two-hundred and sixty-seven patients (149 males, 118 females) with lumbar spine disorders were assessed by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and 254 (127 males, 127 females) asymptomatic control...

Genetic polymorphism in Mannose Binding Lectin-2 (MBL-2) and Vitamin D Receptor (VDR) is known to influence the susceptibility to tuberculosis. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the frequency distribution of the MBL-2 promoter and structural polymorphism (-550 H/L, -221 Y/X, and +4 P/Q; R52C, G54D, and G57F) and VDR polymorphism (FokI, BsmI, TaqI, and ApaI) in healthy individua...

The genetic bases of peak bone mass determinants are still poorly understood, particularly in males. We investigated the relationship between vitamin D receptor (VDR) 3'- and 5'-gene polymorphisms (as determined by the restriction enzymes BsmI and FokI) and bone mineral mass, and calcium and inorganic phosphate (Pi) metabolism in an homogeneous cohort of young healthy men. In 104 healthy subjec...

Targeted genome engineering requires nucleases that introduce a highly specific double-strand break in the genome that is either processed by homology-directed repair in the presence of a homologous repair template or by non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) that usually results in insertions or deletions. The error-prone NHEJ can be efficiently suppressed by 'nickases' that produce a single-strand...