Compact TALEN™: the next generation of TAL effector nucleases - The Scientific journal Nature Communications publishes an innovative study on ultra precise Compact TALEN™ mini DNA cutters

Paris, May 21, 2013 - Cellectis (NYSE PA: ALCLS), the global genome engineering specialist, announced today that the high-impact scientific journal Nature Communications has published an in-house study on the development of Compact TALEN™, the next generation of mini TAL effector nucleases.

Unlike Cellectis’ first‑generation TALEN^TM, which require the dimerization of two molecules, this new tool based on Cellectis’ proprietary TAL effector nucleases technology makes it possible to target specific DNA segments using just a single molecule. The Group is the first in its sector to develop and market such a tool.  

Compact TALEN^TM were designed by Cellectis’ R&D teams and notably by Dr. Marine Beurdeley, the first author of this study. This technology greatly simplifies the design and synthesis as well as the therapeutic delivery of nucleases. The study published in Nature Communications shows that these next‑generation nucleases have retained in vivo DNA cutting capability comparable to that of the original TALEN^TM. This new technology, which is already used in plants and mammalian cells, constitutes a breakthrough in the fields of genome engineering and synthetic biology.  

Dr. Marine Beurdeley holds a degree in agronomy from the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon and a doctorate in neuroscience from the Department of Biology of the École Normale Supérieure. She joined Cellectis’ R&D team in 2010 as Project Leader.