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The prospects for designer single-stranded RNA-binding proteins

Nature Structural & Molecular Biology volume 18, pages 256–261 (2011)Cite this article

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An Erratum to this article was published on 06 April 2011

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Abstract

Spectacular progress has been made in the design of proteins that recognize double-stranded DNA with a chosen specificity, to the point that designer DNA-binding proteins can be ordered commercially. This success raises the question of whether it will be possible to engineer libraries of proteins that can recognize RNA with tailored specificity. Given the recent explosion in the number and diversity of RNA species demonstrated to play roles in biology, designer RNA-binding proteins are set to become valuable tools, both in the research laboratory and potentially in the clinic. Here we discuss the prospects for the realization of this idea.

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Figure 1: Possible uses of engineered RNA-binding proteins (RBPs).
Figure 2: Structures of RNA-recognition motifs (RRMs) and pumilio repeat (PUF) domain complexes with single-stranded RNAs (ssRNAs).
Figure 3: Structures of zinc-finger (ZF)–RNA complexes.

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  • 17 March 2011

    In the version of this article initially published, in several instances "guanidine" should have read "guanine", "uridine" should have read "uracil" and "adenine" should have read "adenosine"; in two instances; "tetratrispolin" should have read "tristetraprolin"; and Figure 2c,d should have illustrated the structure from PDB record 1M8Y. These errors have been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by a grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia to J.P.M.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Molecular Bioscience, University of Sydney, New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

    Joel P Mackay & Josep Font

  2. Department of Pharmacology, University of California at Davis, Davis, California, USA

    David J Segal

  3. Genome Center, University of California at Davis, Davis, California, USA

    David J Segal

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  1. Joel P Mackay
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Correspondence to Joel P Mackay or David J Segal.

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Mackay, J., Font, J. & Segal, D. The prospects for designer single-stranded RNA-binding proteins. Nat Struct Mol Biol 18, 256–261 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nsmb.2005

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