Summary Comparing Zinc Finger Nucleases and Transcription Activator Like Effector Nucleases for Gene Targeting in Drosophila Beumer et al 2013 G3 Genes Genomes Genetics 3 1717 25 The aim of the study was to investigate the use of Transcription activator like effector nucleases TALENs in genome editing by comparing their effectiveness as compared to the widely used Zinc finger nucleases ZFNs Both the tools create double stranded breaks in target sequences via FokI nuclease activity but differ in their recognition pattern ZFNs have been widely used but researchers have faced issues with in terms of affinity of binding to their target among others The present article effectively explains various aspects of TALEN designing and effectiveness based on parameters such as linker size Although both TALENs and ZFNs have been used for genome editing a comparison of both based on their efficacy was lacking The authors set out to compare the effectiveness of TALENs to generate genomic alterations that have already been attempted with ZFNs The authors also report their results in using TALENs to induce novel mutations in Drosophila genes First the authors generated TALENs for two Drosophila genes ry and y
