TALEN-Mediated Mutagenesis and Genome Editing

Transcription activator-like effectors (TALEs) are important genomic tools with customizable DNA-binding motifs for locus-specific modifications. In particular, TALE nucleases or TALENs have been successfully used in the zebrafish model system to introduce targeted mutations via repair of double-stranded breaks (DSBs) either through nonhomologous end joining (NHEJ) or by homology-directed repair (HDR) and homology-independent repair in the presence of a donor template. Compared with other customizable nucleases, TALENs offer high binding specificity and fewer sequence constraints in targeting the genome, with comparable mutagenic activity. Here, we describe a detailed in silico design tool for zebrafish genome editing for TALENs and CRISPR/Cas9 custom restriction enzymes using Mojo Hand 2.0 software.