We write to update you on the status of our NIH-supported effort to
produce Zinc Finger Nucleases (ZFNs) targeted to zebrafish genes.  We
appreciate your patience as we have worked through the logistics of
identifying and then targeting 48 zebrafish genes requested by the
community.  We did encounter some technical issues that slowed our
progress but we believe we have now worked out those problems.

At this point, we are pleased to report that we have successfully
obtained zinc finger array pairs by OPEN or CoDA that can be used to
construct ZFNs that can potentially modify 13 different endogenous
zebrafish genes (Group I listed below).  We also know with certainty
that we were not able to obtain zinc finger array pairs for 10
zebrafish genes (Group II below).  There are also 25 zebrafish genes
for which we are still in the process of determining whether we will
have a pair of zinc finger arrays that can be used as ZFNs (Group III
below).  We anticipate announcing the final results for zinc finger
arrays targeted to the genes in Group III in the next few weeks.

We will initiate the process of depositing zinc finger arrays targeted
to sites in the Group I genes with the non-profit plasmid distribution
service Addgene in the coming days.  The clones should become
available in the next few weeks and will be available here:
http://www.addgene.org/zfc/arrays/.

Before the end of December, we also plan to announce a third
solicitation for potential zebrafish genes to target with ZFNs.

With best regards,

Jeff Sander
Maureen Regan
Keith Joung
Joanna Yeh
Randy Peterson

Group I genes (ZF array pairs successfully obtained):

gene_name "ptp4a3"transcript_name "ptp4a3"
gene_name "LOC566040"transcript_name "LOC566040"
gene_name "esrrga"transcript_name "esrrga"
gene_name "HACE1"
gene_name "mchr1b"transcript_name "mchr1b"
gene_name "arsa"transcript_name "arsa"
gene_name "park2"transcript_name "park2"
gene_name "atp2c1"transcript_name "atp2c1"
gene_name "v2rl1"transcript_name "Q4VDB3_DANRE"
gene_name "gabra5"transcript_name "gabra5"
gene_name "dio2"transcript_name "dio2"
gene_name "drd4a"transcript_name "drd4a"
gene_name "gdf2"transcript_name "gdf2"

Group II genes (failed to obtain ZF array pairs):

gene_name "hnf4a"transcript_name "NP_919349.1"
gene_name "wt1b"transcript_name "wt1b"
gene_name "cx52.9"transcript_name "cx52.9"
gene_name "jup"transcript_name "jup"
gene_name "myca"transcript_name "myca"
gene_name "yap1"transcript_name "yap1"
gene_name "SDC3"
gene_name "igf2bp1"transcript_name "igf2bp1"
gene_name "jazf1a"
gene_name "si:ch211-221n23.1"transcript_name "ZN238_DANRE"

Group III genes (final status of ZF arrays still to be determined):