Achieving Single-Nucleotide Resolution of 5-Methylcytosine Detection with TALEs

We report engineered transcription-activator-like effectors (TALEs) as the first DNA-binding molecules that detect 5-methylcytosine (mC) at single-nucleotide resolution with fully programmable sequence selectivity. This is achieved by a design strategy such that a single cytosine (C) in a DNA sequence is selectively interrogated for its mC-modification level by targeting with a discriminatory TALE repeat; other Cs are ignored by targeting with universal-binding TALE repeats.