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SUMMARY:Structural insights into the mechanism of CRISPR-Cas9 genome editi
 ng
DTSTART:20151110T161500
DTEND:20151110T180000
DTSTAMP:20260427T221725Z
UID:9514bf1996ece95f1a34bafa2896065616c8302a7d32dde45eded169
CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars
DESCRIPTION:Prof. Dr. Martin Jinek\, Universität Zürich\nBio: Martin Jin
 ek was born in  Czechoslovakia in 1979. He studied Chemistry and Natural 
 Sciences at Trinity College\, University of Cambridge (UK). In 2006\, he r
 eceived his PhD from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in H
 eidelberg where he conducted his thesis in the lab of Dr. Elena Conti. He 
 then moved to the University of California in Berkeley for postdoctoral re
 search with Prof. Jennifer Doudna. Martin joined the Department of Biochem
 istry in February 2013 as Assistant Professor on tenure track.\nHe is inte
 rested in the molecular mechanisms that orchestrate cellular regulation th
 rough protein-RNA interactions. His studies include biochemical and struct
 ural approaches to investigate these processes at the atomic level.\nChemi
 cal Biology Seminar Series\nThe CRISPR-Cas9 system provides a simple yet v
 ersatile technology for modifying the genetic information in cells and org
 anisms and is set to revolutionize biotechnology and biomedicine. We previ
 ously showed that the CRISPR-associated protein Cas9 associates with an un
 usual dual-RNA guide structure and cleaves double-stranded DNA sequences c
 omplementary to a 20-nucleotide sequence in the guide RNA. Aiming to estab
 lish Cas9 as a genome editing tool\, we also demonstrated that the enzyme 
 can be programmed using single-molecule guide RNAs to induce double-strand
  DNA breaks in human cells\, paving the way for RNA-guided genetic enginee
 ring using CRISPR-Cas9.\nOur current work focuses on obtaining structural 
 insights into the molecular mechanism of Cas9-mediated DNA cleavage\, whic
 h is critically dependent on the presence of a short Protospacer Adjacent 
 Motif (PAM) in the target DNA. Recently\, we determined the structure of C
 as9-sgRNA complex bound to a PAM-containing DNA target. The structure reve
 als how the PAM motif is read out by sequence-specific interactions and su
 ggests a mechanism for PAM-dependent guide-target heteroduplex formation.\
 nThese studies provide the framework for understanding Cas9 function at th
 e molecular level and for ongoing development of CRISPR-Cas9 for genetic e
 ngineering applications.
LOCATION:SV1717.1 http://plan.epfl.ch/?q=SV1717a
STATUS:CONFIRMED
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