© 2008 Oxford University Press
This article appears in the following Nucleic Acid Symposium Series issue: Joint Symposium of the 18th International Roundtable on Nucleosides, Nucleotides and Nucleic Acids and the 35th International Symposium on Nucleic Acids Chemistry [View the issue table of contents]
Zinc finger protein-based detection system of PCR products for pathogen diagnosis
1Department of Biotechnology and Life Science, Graduate School of Engineering, Tokyo University of Agriculture & Technology, 2-24-16 Naka-cho, Koganei, Tokyo, 184-8588, Japan, 2SYSTEM INSTRUMENTS Co., Ltd., 776-2 Komiya-cho, Hachiouji, Tokyo, 192-0031, Japan
*Corresponding Author. E-mail: ikebu{at}cc.tuat.ac.jp
Abstract
A novel detection system of PCR products from bacterial genomes using Zinc finger proteins was developed. Zinc finger proteins are DNA-binding proteins that can bind to dsDNA with high affinity and specificity. Since Zinc finger proteins can directly detect PCR products and can double-check the specific PCR amplification and sequence specificity of the PCR products, this novel method would be quick and highly accurate. In this study, we tried to construct the detection system for three pathogen, Legionella pneumophila, Salmonella spp. and Influenza A virus using well-characterized Zinc finger proteins. As a result, we succeeded in detecting the PCR products from Legionella pneumophila, Salmonella spp. and Influenza A virus using Sp1 and Zif268. Therefore, this methodology can be applied to the detection of most pathogen using various Zinc finger proteins.