Donor plasmid design for codon and single base genome editing using zinc finger nucleases.

In recent years, CompoZr zinc finger nuclease (ZFN) technology has matured to the point that a user-defined double strand break (DSB) can be placed at virtually any location in the human genome within 50 bp of a desired site. Such high resolution ZFN engineering is well within the conversion tract limitations demarcated by the mammalian DNA repair machinery, resulting in a nearly universal ability to create point mutations throughout the human genome. Additionally, new architectures for targeted nuclease engineering have been rapidly developed, namely transcription activator like effector nucleases (TALENs) and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas systems, further expanding options for placement of DSBs. This new capability has created a need to explore the practical limitations of delivering plasmid-based information to the sites of chromosomal double strand breaks so that nuclease-donor methods can be widely deployed in fundamental and therapeutic research. In this chapter, we explore a ZFN-compatible donor design in the context of codon changes at an endogenous locus encoding the human RSK2 kinase.