Patent ID: 7442784

Claim:
A nucleic acid molecule, comprising a sequence of nucleotides encoding the fusion protein, wherein: the fusion protein comprises a nucleotide binding domain (DBD) operatively linked to a modified ligand binding domain (LBD) from an intracellular receptor: the fusion protein is a ligand activated transcriptional regulator; the nucleotide binding domain is a polydactyl zinc-finger domain that contains at least three modular portions thereof; each modular portion of the nucleotide binding domain interacts with a contiguous sequence of nucleotides of at least 3 nucleotides; and the ligand specificity of the LBD for endogenous and exogenous ligands is modified to change its ligand specificity compared to the ligand specificity of the ligand binding domain of the native intracellular receptor, whereby ligands that activate the fusion protein are not the ligands that activate the receptor from which the LBD was derived.