DNA-binding protein

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DNA-binding proteins are proteins that comprise any of many DNA-binding domains and thus have a specific or general affinity to DNA.

DNA-binding proteins include transcription factors which modulate the process of transcription, nucleases which cleave DNA molecules, and histones which are involved in DNA packaging in the cell nucleus. DNA-binding proteins can incorporate such DNA-binding domains as the zinc finger, the helix-turn-helix, and the leucine zipper (among many others). There are 8 structural families of DNA binding proteins.

Sequence-specific DNA-binding proteins generally interact with the major groove of B-DNA, because it exposes more functional groups that identify a base pair.

The specificity of DNA-binding proteins can be identified using the DNase footprinting technique.

[edit] See also

• Single-strand binding protein

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Ascalaph DNA tool for modeling DNA-ligand interactions.
• DBD database of predicted transcription factors^[1] Uses a curated set of DNA-binding domains to predict transcription factors in all completely sequenced genomes
• MeSH DNA-Binding+Proteins