The artificial zinc finger protein 'Blues' binds the enhancer of the fibroblast growth factor 4 and represses transcription.

The design of novel genes codifying for artificial transcription factors represents a powerful tool in biotechnologies and medicine. We have engineered a new zinc finger based transcription factor, named Blues, able to bind and possibly to modify the expression of the growth factor FGF-4 (K-fgf), originally identified as an oncogene. Blues encodes for a three-zinc finger peptide and was constructed to target the nine base pair DNA sequence: " 5' -GTT-TGG-ATG- 3' ", internal to the murine FGF-4 enhancer, in proximity of Sox-2 and Oct-3 DNA binding sites. Our final aim is to generate a model system based on artificial zinc finger genes to study the biological role of FGF-4 during development and tumorigenesis.