Patent ID: 8680021

Claim:
A method of making a modified plant zinc finger protein comprising two or more zinc fingers, the method comprising the steps of: (a) providing a non-canonical plant zinc finger sequence comprising the sequence Cys-(X) 2-4 -Cys-(X) 12 -His-(X) 3-5 -His (SEQ ID NO: 1), where X is any amino acid, wherein the C-terminal His residue is replaced with a Cys residue and all of the Cys and His residues are zinc coordinating residues and further wherein the 7 amino C-terminal residues of (X) 12 are the recognition helix region of the zinc finger and bind to target DNA; (b) modifying the non-canonical plant zinc finger sequence, wherein the modifying comprises making at least one substitution of at least one of the amino acid residues outside the recognition helix region and engineering the recognition helix region (c) combining the non-canonical plant zinc finger sequence with one or more additional plant canonical C2H2 zinc finger sequences into a zinc finger protein comprising two or more zinc fingers such that there are between 5 and 50 amino acids between adjacent zinc finger sequences, wherein the C-terminal zinc finger is the non-canonical plant zinc finger sequence thereby making a modified plant zinc finger protein.