Development and Applications of CRISPR-Cas for Genome Editing
Description
Advances in genome sequencing technology have accelerated the rate at which we can identify genetic variants associated with phenotypes related to human health and disease, but functionally interrogating these variants remains time intensive. Being able to quickly find the causative variants in a sea of a natural variation is essential to the goal of personalized medicine. To this end, new genome editing tools adapted from the microbial CRISPR-Cas system can be employed to rapidly screen through variants for functional effects as well as to model diseases based on patient-specific mutations. I discuss here how the CRISPR-Cas system can be deployed as a powerful discovery platform, highlighting recent findings from CRISPR screens, and describe therapeutic applications for this powerful tool. Finally, I present recent work exploring the next generation of genome editing technologies beyond Cas9, and how these new tools will further expand our ability to connect genotype to phenotype and, ultimately, treat human disease.
Speaker Bio
Feng Zhang joined the McGovern Institute in 2011. He is also a core member of the Broad Institute, the W. M. Keck Career Development Professor in Biomedical Engineering, and an assistant professor in the MIT department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences. He obtained a bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a PhD in chemistry and bioengineering from Stanford University. Before joining the MIT faculty he was a junior fellow of the Harvard University Society of Fellows. He is a Searle Scholar, and has received both a Director’s Transformative Research Award and a Directors’ Pioneer Award from the National Institutes of Health. In 2012 he shared the UNC/Perl Prize for his role in the development of optogenetics.