TALENs (Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases) | Gene Editing Explained

talents or transcription activator like effector nucleuses what are they how do they work and why are they useful talents are one of the three most common techniques along with syncfinger new classes or zfns and crispr cas9 that we currently use in gene editing in fact one simplified way to think of all three of these methods is as iterative versions of genetic editing where z defense are the most crude or basic version version 1 and crispr cast 9 is the most commonly utilized or version 3 due to its simplicity versatility as well as precision talon which we will talk about today can be considered as version 2. so what are talons tal effectors are proteins that are secreted by xanthomonas bacteria which is a type of plant bacteria when these infect plants these tails contain highly conserved repeats these repeats are also called repeat variable residues or rvds and act as a sort of key allowing for very specific binding to a specific section of dna talents are made by fusing these tails with fok1 fog 1 endonuclease used to cut the dna at the particular point we wish to cut it at putting it another way fusing the tails and one and the nucleus together allows us to create a highly specific gene scissor if you have watched my video on seeing fingernail classes this fog one enzyme probably sounds familiar since it is used for the exact same purposes in that technique as well but what about how these talents actually work in action well to use this technique the talon construct specific for the dna sequences in question first has to be engineered then this construct is inserted into a plasmid a plasmid being a circular piece of dna inside a eukaryotic cell this plasmid is transfected or in other words inserted into the cell and the talon catches a ride with the plasmid since it has been inserted into it once inside the cell the dna of the plasmid gets expressed and with it the talon also gets expressed and in this manner it is free to enter the nucleus once inside of the nucleus it binds to its specific section of dna thanks to the repeat variable residues or rvd which again works similar to a key analog then the focus creates a cut into the dna this process happens on the other side of the double-stranded dna at the same time creating a double-stranded break in this dna by varying exactly how the talons cut the dna and whether or not it does so in the presence of an alternative dna strand a gene can either be deleted or altered again this is very similar to how syncfinger nucleus gene editing works gene editing in general is a rather controversial topic however a large part is due to the massive impact it could have on society both good and bad but in my opinion honestly mostly good but i do understand the concerns that a lot of people have and i feel that it's also warranted partly due to how new this technique still is and everything nuke tends to be a little bit scary at first but also there are a lot of ethical concerns that need to be raised and thought about when it comes to genetical engineering and honestly that's something for an entire other video but for now at this point i would say that one thing is certain and that is that genetic engineering in some form or another is not going anywhere we are going to use this technique in the future the question is how much and in what contexts the technique overall is simply too useful for us to ignore so the question rather becomes to what extent do we want to limit its uses if you found today's video informative please take a second and share it with someone who could benefit as well it helps me out massively also if there is a topic you would like me to cover please go ahead and comment it below next i have linked my videos on syncfingernew classes as well as crispr cast 9 so if that sounds interesting click on one of the videos on the screen now until next time

Channel: BiotechLucas

Views: 13,965

Keywords: TALENs, TALENs (Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nucleases) | Gene Editing Explained, gene editing, Transcription Activator-Like Effector Nuclease, TALEN, gene editing with TALENs, genetic editing using TALEN

Id: FyBMBHDB4Mo

Length: 4min 33sec (273 seconds)

Published: Wed May 04 2022