The POT1 protein plays a critical role in telomere protection and telomerase regulation. POT1 binds single-stranded 5′-TTAGGGTTAG-3′ and forms a dimer with the TPP1 protein. Human POT1 contains two Oligonucleotide/Oligosaccharide Binding (OB) fold domains, OB1 and OB2, which make physical contact with the DNA. OB1 recognizes 5′-TTAGGG whereas OB2 binds to the downstream TTAG-3′ (1,2). Several recent studies from other species have shown that some of these proteins are able to recognize a broader variety of DNA ligands than expected (3). A recent reference reexamined the sequence-specificity of the Human POT1 protein (4).
SELEX (Systematic Evolution of Ligands through Exponential Enrichment) was used to re-examine the DNA-binding specificity of human POT1 (5).
