Abstract: Endonucleases play an essential role in genetic engineering and molecular biology. A major barrier to the clinical adoption of nucleases and engineered nucleases remain the overall lack of specificity and activity. Off-site cleavage, cleavage at loci other than the target loci, typically occurs resulting in mutations, unexpected gene-knockouts, or translocations. Provided herein are systems and methods for identifying the off-site cleavage loci and predicting the activity of engineered endonucleases for a given genome. It is expected that these tools and methods will be useful for designing nucleases and other related DNA binding domains (e.g. TAL effectors) for genomic therapy and engineering.

Abstract: Endonucleases play an essential role in genetic engineering and molecular biology. A major barrier to the clinical adoption of nucleases and engineered nucleases remain the overall lack of specificity and activity. Off-site cleavage, cleavage at loci other than the target loci, typically occurs resulting in mutations, unexpected gene-knockouts, or translocations. Provided herein are systems and methods for identifying the off-site cleavage loci and predicting the activity of engineered endonucleases for a given genome. It is expected that these tools and methods will be useful for designing nucleases and other related DNA binding domains (e.g. TAL effectors) for genomic therapy and engineering.