Background: Precise and efficient methods for gene targeting are critical for detailed functional analysis of genomes and regulatory networks and for potentially improving the efficacy and safety of gene therapies. Oligomerized Pool ENgineering (OPEN) is a recently developed method for engineering C2H2 zinc finger proteins (ZFPs) designed to bind specific DNA sequences with high affinity and specificity in vivo. Because generation of ZFPs using OPEN requires considerable effort, a computational method for identifying the sites in any given gene that are most likely to be successfully targeted by this method is desirable. Results: Analysis of the base composition of experimentally validated ZFP target sites identified important constraints on the DNA sequence space that can be effectively targeted using OPEN. Using alternate encodings to represent ZFP target sites, we implemented Na
Jeffry D. Sander, Deepak Reyon, Morgan L. Maeder,