The investigators have obtained a one year starter grant and showed good progress toward Aim I.
Aim I is to take antibody genes, genes that code for antibody recognition sites specific for adducts, from hybridomas. Then functional recombinant Ab fragments, ScFv fragments, are assembled as fusion proteins on the surface of bacteriophage M13 and ScFv fragment-gIIIp fusion proteins subsequently are overproduced in E. coli.
The second aim i s to alter the specificity and affinity of the proteins to adducts by genetic manipulation.
The third aim i s to construct chimeric endonucleases consisting of an ScFv fragment as the recognition domain and the FokI cleavage domain.