Type II Restriction Endonucleases : a Historical Perspective and More
Published online 30 May 2014 Nucleic Acids Research, 2014, Vol. 42, No. 12 7489–7527 doi: 10.1093/nar/gku447 SURVEY AND SUMMARY Type II restriction endonucleases––a historical perspective and more Alfred Pingoud1,*,†, Geoffrey G. Wilson2,† and Wolfgang Wende1 1Institute of Biochemistry, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, Heinrich-Buff-Ring 58, D-35392 Giessen, Germany and 2New England Biolabs Inc., 240 County Road, Ipswich, MA 01938-2723, USA Downloaded from Received January 7, 2014; Revised May 02, 2014; Accepted May 7, 2014 ABSTRACT combat viral infections, these enzymes allow unmanageable http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/ tangles of macromolecular DNA to be transformed with This article continues the series of Surveys and Sum- unsurpassable accuracy into convenient, gene-sized pieces, maries on restriction endonucleases (REases) begun a necessary first step for characterizing genomes, sequenc- this year in Nucleic Acids Research.Herewedis- ing genes, and assembling DNA into novel genetic arrange- cuss ‘Type II’ REases, the kind used for DNA anal- ments. It seems unlikely that today’s Biomedical Sciences ysis and cloning. We focus on their biochemistry: and the Biotechnology industry would have developed with- what they are, what they do, and how they do it. Type out Type II restriction enzymes, and certainly not at the II REases are produced by prokaryotes to combat startling pace we have witnessed since their discovery only at Bibliothekssystem der Universitaet Giessen on February 10, 2015 bacteriophages. With extreme accuracy, each recog- a few decades ago. nizes a particular sequence in double-stranded DNA and cleaves at a fixed position within or nearby. The INTRODUCTION discoveries of these enzymes in the 1970s, and of the uses to which they could be put, have since im- Several reviews of restriction endonucleases (REases) have pacted every corner of the life sciences.
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