IAS Lee Kong Chian Distinguished Professor Public Lecture 15 Nov 2024
“Editing Your DNA: What Could Possibly Go Wrong” by Prof Maria Jasin
CRISPR gene editing is transforming biomedical science as well as providing therapeutic opportunities in many medical contexts. It often employs DNA double strand breaks, but these come at a risk. We will discuss this risk and novel approaches of risk assessment.
About the speaker [More info]: Prof Maria Jasin is a biomedical researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, where she holds the William E. Snee Chair in the Developmental Biology Program. In addition to her MSK appointment, she also has an appointment in the Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences. Research in her laboratory focuses on DNA recombination and the relationship to the maintenance of genomic integrity and cancer, targeted genome modification, and meiosis. She obtained a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and performed postdoctoral research at the University of Zürich and Stanford University in before starting her own lab in New York. She is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
“Arms Race in the Bacterial World: Who is the Winner?” By Prof Virginijus Šikšnys
Bacteriophages, or bacterial viruses, are the most abundant entities in the biosphere and serve as major parasites of bacteria. They infect bacteria in order to generate their progeny and usually kill bacteria when their replication is completed. In response, bacteria have evolved multiple defense mechanisms to resist viral attacks. This, in turn, drives phages to develop new strategies to break bacterial defense fueling a continuous evolutionary arms race. In my talk I will explore the significance of this microbial arms race and demonstrate how humans have emerged as beneficiaries. By harnessing and adapting bacterial defense strategies, we have developed powerful tools that drive modern biotechnology and gene-editing technologies.
About the speaker [More info]: Prof Virginijus Šikšnys holds the position of Distinguished Professor of Vilnius University and serves as Chief scientist/head of the department at the Institute of Biotechnology. He is also the Scientific Director of EMBL partnership Institute on Genome Editing at the Life Science Center of Vilnius University. His research focuses on the structural and molecular mechanisms of antiviral defense systems in bacteria and development of novel genome editing tools. Prof Virginijus Šikšnys’s research on the CRISPR-Cas has had a major impact in the field of gene editing. He together with co-authors, published seminal papers on Cas9 biochemistry that were the foundation for the translation of CRISPR-Cas bacterial immune system into a powerful genome-editing tool. He is a member of EMBO, EAM, Lithuania Academy of Sciences and Norwegian Academy of Sciences and letters. His work has been recently recognised with several awards and prizes including the Kavli Prize.
Guest of Honour: Prof Chiba Shunsuke, Chair, School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, NTU
This public lecture is held in conjunction with the IAS Frontiers Conference on Genome Engineering.